Dark Horse
by jenhill7
Summary: ELSANNA, Modern AU. After a near death experience, Anna leaves her husband in search of a better life. She finds a better love as well in a shy woman named Elsa. However, a tragic accident propels them into an unseen world, where every aspect of their life and love is challenged. This is a story told both in the present time and in flashbacks of the past.
1. Chapter 1

_Authors Note: I wrote this story for NaNoWriMo in 2008, and cleaned it up in 2009. Since then, I had no place to share it. This story means a lot to me, because I worked out a lot of issues in the writing of it: divorcing my husband, coming out to my deeply religious family, forging a new relationship with God, and waiting for my first real kiss. I would love to share it with you, and so I have rewritten my two female protagonists as Elsa and Anna. They fit this story remarkably well. The good news for readers? This story is already complete, so you can read all the updates and know we'll get to the ending. You can expect topics of religion, of homosexuality, of family and sacrifice and even a bit of magic. I don't expect everyone to enjoy this story, especially by the time we make it to the ending, but I will share it as long as I get some interest in follows, faves and reviews._

_For anyone reading my other story, "The Weight of Snow", I will also keep writing it, and we'll reach the ending there as well. Believe me, it's much fluffier than this, so if you just want sweet romance, read that one instead. :) Otherwise, welcome to __**Dark Horse.**_

**Dark Horse**

**~1~**

**Now (2010)**

Quiet and calm, Elsa waited for Anna to die.

The sun had set an hour ago. The first stars were setting up their shops in the sky, ready to peddle their magic to the denizens of the milky way. The scent of pine and brine was strong upon the secluded beach, and there was wet sand between Elsa's toes. A thin blanket protected her back from the gritty coolness of the boulder she rested against, and Anna was in her arms.

Early October. The evening was delicious. There was little sound beyond the breaking of the water, the occasional call of plover. Maine had infinite miles of deserted beach; Elsa didn't want anyone to see Anna die.

She had learned not to cry.

The two-way radio was near her hand. She would need help carrying the body.

"Will I see you in the morning?" Anna asked. Her voice was timid and soft, as if she was afraid of the answer.

Elsa had learned to lie. "Of course you will."

The scent of Anna's hair was overpowered by the salt sting of the sea. Elsa nuzzled deeper into Anna's rich red hair; her partner settled a little deeper into Elsa's warm embrace. Anna's breath turned heavy, and Elsa wondered what she was thinking, these last moments of her life.

Was she remembering the sound of the calliope, the shrill whistle of the carnival instrument cutting through the noise of the Salem fair?

Was there bastard seawater in her mouth?

Or was she remembering the taste of cocoa and cream on Elsa's lips, the first time they kissed?

"Talk to me, Elsa," Anna begged, her voice conquered by imminent despair. She cautiously squeezed Elsa's hands, which were snaked around her small waist.

"Do you remember the first time you made lunch for me?" Elsa whispered into Anna's nicked ear. "You couldn't stand to see me eat another peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

"It was lamb and labneh that day, wasn't it?" Anna said. Part of her words were nearly lost to the susurration of the waves, the keeling cry of shorebirds. A light breeze tugged at them, and Elsa shivered. It was almost time.

She still wouldn't cry.

"Yes," Elsa agreed. "As I recall, you couldn't even watch me eat it. You sent Haley to spy on me while you hid in the library staff room."

Anna turned slightly in Elsa's embrace; in the faltering moonlight Elsa could see her eyes gleaming. "I used to call you the book castle woman. You were like a maiden with shining hair in a tower made of books."

"I didn't think anyone even cared to storm the keep," Elsa said. "Except for you."

There was a sudden strident buzzing from Anna's watch. She deactivated the alarm without taking her eyes from Elsa. It was 9 pm.

Four minutes left.

Elsa could feel the beating of Anna's heart, the warmth of the womanly body anchored to the front of her. "Thank you for letting me die here," Anna whispered.

Elsa couldn't reply. She lifted her hands and used her damaged fingers to caress Anna's cheek, to draw Anna's lips to hers. They were soft and warm and familiar; Elsa had already mapped them, had imprinted the taste and feeling of them deep into her heart and soul. The kiss led to a familiar and damning hunger; she tilted her lips to gain a different Anna-vantage, running her tongue over her lips and dipping lightly inside.

Anna clutched at her, diving deep; each movement hollowed her, and Elsa knew that she owed Anna a debt that could never be repaid. Death was no barrier to their love.

Not even this death, here on an isolated beach in Maine, this death among the plovers and the whispering seawater.

Three.

Two.

One.

It happened slowly. First, Anna's breathing slowed, grew shallow. Finally desperate and quaking, burning with unshed tears, Elsa kissed her harder, willing her dearest one to stay alive just a little longer. Yet Anna's lips stilled, her limbs lost all volition, and her glorious eyes stayed closed.

She shone briefly the very last moment, a dying star, as if taken up by that God she didn't believe in. Elsa knew the truth; Anna was being swallowed by the unseen world, the world that lurked behind every mirror, inside every shadow, within the molecules of water. Some have said that is where God lives.

Elsa never saw Him there.

And then it was over. Anna was dead.

Her throat bricked up tight with loss, Elsa softly kissed those quiescent lips one last time, holding the body for a few minutes, wondering as she often did how Anna's ex-husband could have been so blind. Asking herself why she had wasted so much time at the beginning of their friendship, waiting too damn long to acknowledge the attraction she had felt towards Anna. So much time between the lamb and labneh and the cocoa and cream. And for what?

Elsa's father was long dead. He couldn't judge her choice.

Dead as Anna.

Elsa chose to stay there, resting against the gritty boulder, hearing nothing but the caress of wind on sand, wind through trees, wind under the wings of plover, dipping and wheeling in the night. She leaned against the lush redness of Anna's hair, and there she could smell more than pine and brine; it was shampoo and hand lotion, accompanied by a faint sultry scent of orchids.

There was no heartbeat, no steady rise and fall of breath. Anna was gone. It took some effort to keep the tears at bay, but Elsa still did not cry.

Eventually the body grew cold, but not stiff. That was when Elsa finally picked up the two-way radio. "Kristoff, it's time," she said.

"I'll be there soon," her brother promised.

Elsa put the radio back down on the sand before shimmying away from the boulder, stepping into her sandals. After laying Anna carefully on the ground she reached into the fraying knapsack, fishing out the Coleman lantern. Soon the hiss of the gas lamp accompanied the sighing of the despondent ocean. Elsa put her back to the forest, to the path that led back to the inn, to the recently dead thing on the sand and watched the reflection of the slim moon on the inconstant water.

The debt was so very deep.

A short time later Elsa could hear Kristoff approaching; she turned to see the flashlight bobbing in front of him. In the dimness his form was stocky and tall, slightly stooped and slightly paunched. At this time of night he could have been mistaken for their father if he had not been long mouldering in a tiny cemetery outside West Dresden, Maine.

The oil lamp illuminated him better as he neared; sandy hair and brilliant blue eyes. Elsa was younger than he, yet there were far more fine lines in her face, far more grey strands near imperceptible in her platinum hair.

And Anna, beloved and youthful Anna, beautiful even in death. Elsa couldn't bear to look at her.

So Kristoff stopped near Anna's body and set his flashlight on the blanketed rock, looking at Elsa. There were no words to say, not really. Elsa contented herself with nodding, hugging her middle. The night that had been so exquisitely cool was now downright chilly, and her skin pebbled in gooseflesh. She lifted her lantern with her right hand so Kristoff could pick Anna up.

He was strong, after such practice. One arm under her limp legs, the other under her middle back, a slight grunt of exertion and Anna hung from him with all the intention of an overcooked noodle. He must have seen something in Elsa's expression, some millstone that mired her soul, for he said, "Morning will come fast enough, Elsa."

Elsa didn't believe him. She didn't measure time in days, weeks, or even months. Only by these empty spaces of night-time, anxiously waiting for the dawn. It was nine hours that Elsa cared about. Nine hours and four minutes, to be precise, the longest stretch of time in her day.

Putting her sandals back on, she walked beside Kristoff as they retreated home to the inn, his flashlight stowed in her knapsack, her lantern showing the way. The path was wide, painstakingly clear of tree roots. Long ago Kristoff had built two small boardwalks to cover the thin rills of water that insisted on dividing their way.

A lock of hair was brushing against Anna's nose, and Elsa had to resist the urge to tuck it back behind her ears, as Anna would have done in life.

"Has Haley made it home yet?" Elsa asked, near desperate to break up and subdue this silence about them, the birds that mocked them, the wind that laughed, the conspiracy of the clouded moon.

"Not yet," Kristoff replied, stepping carefully, trying for Elsa's sake not to jiggle Anna about. Anna could care less. She was dead. "She wanted to get home in time to see Anna, but her last flight got cancelled and the next one doesn't leave until morning."

Elsa's throat couldn't allow any more words. Haley was too late. Anna was dead.

The domineering trees began to give way to wild grass, an erupted fence shielding the path from inquisitive eyes. It would not do for stray guests at their bed and breakfast to observe the ornament in Kristoff's arms. They were silent as they continued up the path, gutted and smoothed by such perennial activity.

Elsa held the lantern with her right hand; she had to use her sore hand to open the door. Kristoff turned sideways to get through the opening without cracking Anna's head. The kitchen was lit by a nightlight, though some light escaped through the clouded glass door that led to the common room. Tinned laughter was coming from the television set, echoed by their guests, the sound seeping through the cracks in the closed kitchen door. Elsa set down the lantern and rubbed her aching hand.

Kristoff walked quickly through the kitchen so their body-moving would not to be noticed. Elsa opened the door that led to their private portion of the inn, led the way along the narrow hall and opened the door to their bedroom. Kristoff laid down his burden on their bed, draping Anna's limp body on the near side. "Call if you need anything," Kristoff murmured before retreating, shutting the door behind him.

No one could give Elsa what she really needed.

Her damaged fingers had grown adept at pulling Anna's clothing from her body; once the corpse was naked, she tucked it between the sheets. They were Egyptian cotton, a luxury for skin that couldn't feel it, couldn't enjoy it, save in daylight. Elsa fluffed the pillow before placing it under Anna's head and then she adjusted Anna's twin ginger braids. Anna's skin was clammy, cold. Thank God her eyes stayed closed.

After changing into her own unimportant nightclothes, Elsa sat at her vanity. There was no mirror. All the large mirrors in the inn were confined to the guest quarters. Elsa kept only a tiny one on a stand for her futile nightly ministrations; she drew it from a drawer in the vanity and sat so she could see Anna's form in the periphery of her vision. She began stroking her long platinum blonde hair with a soft brush, then paused. She slowly swivelled the mirror until it was facing the dead body in their bed.

Anna cast no reflection, not even as a blanket covered lump. She hadn't had a reflection for nine long years. There was no earthly mirror that could ever reflect any of Anna's beauty. To this the material world Anna did not even exist.

She was more than dead.

Sighing, Elsa pivoted the mirror until it revealed only her own weary face. She finished brushing her hair and applied cold cream and a ream of body lotion. She was fighting a losing battle with time, aware as every year passed that Anna was staying young and she was not.

Yet she wouldn't peddle Anna's fountain of youth to anyone, not even her worst enemy.

The fortune teller would experience a different fate.

Elsa returned to the bedroom. She knelt at her bedside and murmured a quiet prayer before sliding between those exquisite sheets. Laying on her side, she touched the cool skin of Anna's cheek, ran her thumb along the crest of Anna's jaw and remembered kissing her on the beach, that cool and damp sand between her toes. She placed her sore hand on Anna's naked stomach, flat and lightly muscled.

She could never touch Anna for very long at night; the aching coolness of the corpse would penetrate her hand and make her joints ache. Too soon she retreated, shivering in the sheets. She wished that sleep could overtake her, and spare her the torture of being next to Anna's cold and inert body. Sleep proved elusive, and nine hours and four minutes seemed long.

**Then (1999)**

Anna was offered a ride home; the female officer looked at her narrowly at her soft decline. Before the woman could protest, Anna was pushing through the heavy doors of the police station into the wet and cold slap of a Maine winter day. Tugging her scarf around her neck and hunching into her jacket, Anna walked down the nearly deserted midafternoon sidewalks trying not to think about what had just happened.

She'd experienced a whole lot of ugly in her life, but she'd never had a gun pointed at her before. It hadn't seemed possible in a small town like Ashland, Maine.

Anna stared at the ground as she walked; the grass was frosted with snow and ached for spring. The houses lining these streets were wheezing and old; paint peeled from icy porches and shingles curled their edges as if to plead for assistance from an uncaring sky. So many windows had curtains concealing the rooms beyond them.

She could not banish the awful memories; it had happened only hours ago, and the images were too hideous to be placated or ignored.

The man holding the gun had been plain of face, even honest-looking. There had been a faint hint of Old Spice as he had come through the doors of the gas station. At the time she thought nothing of his quick glance to right and left. It was midday and she had been reading a dog-eared and beloved paperback, waiting for a customer.

Anna huddled deeper in her threadbare coat. The damp cold was seeping through her clothing, but Anna didn't care. A slim thread of rebellion and fear was growing within her. Instead of taking the sidewalk that would lead to the trailer park she cut through a ragged opening of fence that led to a scraggly copse of trees. It was a mixed patch of forest on the outskirts of town; naked deciduous trees shivered next to domineering pine and spruce. Thin and ill-frequented paths led through these trees.

There was no panic button under the counter and the surveillance cameras were only for show. By the din of Hank Williams coming from the adjoining garage she knew that Dave, her boss, was likely banging under the chassis of a Chevy, humming tonelessly and oblivious. When the man had pointed the gun at her, her stomach had produced a sudden churn of acid.

She was not brave. She had cried a little as she pulled money from the register; her hands were stupid and nearly incoherent. Her tears seemed to assault him; his face got harder and his gun hand shook as she stuffed the miniscule portion of money in a plastic shopping bag.

Now deep in the trees, Anna found the body of a dead dog a thin distance away from the scuffed and weed-choked path. She stopped to stare at the animal in morbid fascination. It must have died sometime before winter struck; the maggots that had delightfully plundered its flesh were now completely frozen. The skin had pulled away from its jaw in the rigors of death, forming a gleaming sarcastic rictus of a smile.

It seemed as if the dog had discovered some form of uncomforting truth in that moment of death, that there was no heaven, no future except this military occupation by insects, nothing to look forward to in this life or beyond. Why else would the dog smile so mockingly?

It had once been a German Shepherd before becoming this hotel for vacationing maggots, perhaps beloved of a child, now simply dead. Had no one cared enough for this animal to go looking for it, to organize search parties or barrage the local police station with enquiries? Had God allowed another trigger happy plain-faced man to point a gun, whether to exact justice against chicken-stealing or merely to prove his own power?

Anna looked at the body of the dead dog, and discovered that heaven really was dead as well.

Had the ground been warm or inviting, she would have fetched a shovel to bury it, a gesture more for her comfort than anything else. The dog could care less. The dog was dead.

The ground was frozen. It was January of 1999, gnawingly cold in Ashland, Maine, and just hours ago Anna had narrowly cheated death.

The man had been desperate, and clumsy with his gun. When it mistakenly fired, the bullet nicked the lobe of Anna's ear. A single droplet of blood had formed and fallen, crimson like a winter cranberry. Looking into his eyes in the deafening silence that followed, Anna knew the man was perilously close to making a decision about the likelihood of her staying alive long enough to see another sunset.

He had gone this far. He would go farther; he would kill her, buy her silence with her blood, and nothing Anna could say or do would stop him. If she had been capable of rational thought, she would have burned at the injustice of it.

Maybe he had a story that would explain his actions. Perhaps he was losing money in the madness that was preceding the new millennium, the fear-virus of Y2K that was overwhelming the world. Perhaps his wife was sick and they had nothing to eat. He didn't look like a junkie; the bills from the gas station register wouldn't be used for cocaine or alcohol or morphine.

Raw, fatal desperation.

Anna stared at the dead dog, shivering. She had wanted to find the God of her childhood here, in the dirt, the frozen trees, the piercing snow and the sullen winter sky. He certainly wasn't to be found at neither work nor home, and Anna had stopped attending church years ago.

If that man had been successful in his final desperation, would anyone have cared? If it were her face twisted in that final mocking grin, her blood that flood of cranberries?

She found her answer in the forsaken corpse of the dog, and it really should not have surprised her. After all, if man was made in the image of God, and man was unapologetically cruel, it only stood to reason that God was just a big bully.

And life was only this predictable and unlovely track, every day ahead similar to every day behind. The future was set, and the future sucked.

Then and there, at that moment in the company of the dead dog and the frozen maggots, Anna made a decision, without even knowing she made it.

Maybe it wasn't too late after all. Maybe she had a second chance, an opportunity to make things right.

Even after she arrived home her shivering seemed endless. Locking the bathroom door, Anna stepped into the shower, turning the knobs until the water was nearly blistering hot. Her injured ear began to throb as it thawed. She stayed there, her long red hair streaming down her wet back like rivulets of blood, remaining quiet and still until the hot water ran out.

The tremors were bone deep. Mere minutes after emerging from the shower, Anna was shivering again. She pulled on flannel pyjamas and socks and went to bed, pulling her own curtains to veil the mocking afternoon sun, wrapping herself in a blanket. She opened her favourite book only to realize that she couldn't read it. It had gone rotten.

She had been reading it when he came to the gas station, ready to rob and kill for his need. Staring into the barrel of his gun, Anna realized she was terrified of death, especially as there was no heaven to look forward to. She only had this one chance at life, and she was blowing it.

With a bullet staring her in the face, it was too late to change anything.

She had never really been kissed.

Anna threw the book across the room; it hit the wallpaper and slid to the floor. She wept until she fell asleep.

It was nearly dark when she woke. She hadn't left any lights on, yet there was light and sound emanating from the room down the hall. Feeling thick and strangely exhausted, a dull tinge of pain from her ear, Anna wrestled her hair into submission by plaiting it into two braids, and then padded down the stained and thin carpet until she stood in the doorway to the tiny second bedroom turned office.

Hans was sitting in his computer chair, his hair unkempt. He hadn't yet bothered with a shower; he still smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke from work. He played an addictive dance of keyboard and mouse as he navigated a fantasy online world of dragons and dwarves and condescending elves.

"Have you eaten?" she asked quietly, having formed a dozen likely sentences to begin this conversation and throwing most of them away.

He didn't turn to acknowledge her; a horde of imps were converging on him. His elf activated a spell book as he replied, "Yeah, there's some leftovers in the kitchen."

Along with a pile of dirty dishes, no doubt. Nothing changed here.

"You didn't wake me up," Anna said, trying very hard to keep a blade of iron from her voice.

"I figured you needed the sleep."

The graphics on the screen weren't all that impressive, but blood spilling from sword-riven bodies was always recognizable.

Red like cranberries, like the drop from her ear.

"How was your day?" she asked. If he were feeling human, he might respond in kind. Then she might be able to tell her husband about the guy with the gun, the dead dog, and the truth that roared within her as she looked at frozen maggots.

Apparently he was a dwarf right now, with a jabbering elven wizard for a traveling companion. Hans decapitated a ghoul before answering, "Fine, babe. Listen, I really want to pass this level."

The female officer, Sergeant Carter, had tried to call Hans at work when Anna had finished a cup of dank coffee and her statement at the station. Anna knew contacting her husband would be a futile pursuit. Hans's work crew had been at a construction site outside town, and the foreman was notorious for not "hearing" his radio. Hated pity had swirled in the officer's eyes when Anna had declined the ride home. Anna wanted to get out of sight as soon as possible; the woman seemed able to see right through her. She didn't want to cry, not there. Crying had never done her any good.

Her stomach sent a fresh spurt of acid at Hans' rejection of her, twisting in pain as Anna turned away from him and his damn computer. She walked to the kitchen and turned on the light; outside the windows the sun had almost set, save for a last bloody splash over the Appalachians. A small collection of dirtied utensils was strewn across the counter and there was a pot of congealing macaroni and cheese on the stove. A package of hot dogs was open on the counter.

Anna cleaned up, her movements mechanical, her thoughts turbulent as a storm-tossed sea.

The officer had pitied her.

The dog had grinned at her.

God had mocked her.

All she wanted was to be kissed. Really, deeply kissed.

Was it really too late?

Anna put down the cloth and walked back to the office. That refrain of rebellion and fear gained strength within her. She hovered in the doorway, looking at Hans's broad shoulders, the calloused fingers that caressed the keyboard as if a lover. Whatever chemistry they had as a couple in the beginning of their marriage was long gone, if it had even been there at all.

Was Hans her choice, or her father's?

"Hans?" she asked.

"Hmm?" he asked, switching a battleaxe for a short sword and shield. A blue dragon was taunting him. It appeared as if the elf had already fallen victim to some synthetic enemy.

Life sucks, then you die.

"I want a divorce," she said, carefully trying to be loud enough, but not too loud.

At first it seemed as if her words could not cut through the din of the online game; Hans played for a moment or two before acknowledging what she had said.

It was a game that couldn't be paused. In his confusion and stupor, the dwarf was eviscerated by the dragon.

"What did you say?" he asked, turning in his chair to look at her. He had always been too handsome for her, with his gleaming auburn hair and emerald eyes. Once she had counted herself the luckiest of girls to have his attention on her. She ignored all the warning signs of his controlling nature, just as she convinced herself that every woman got slapped a time or two by their partner.

He was handsome, but he had no beauty.

Beauty was what she needed most, to erase the pain of her nicked ear and wash away the sight of the dead dog.

"You heard me," she replied, trying to make her voice hard. Under his angry and recriminating gaze she knew that her resolve was only thin frost that wouldn't survive the dawn.

The millennium was coming. Some called it the end of the world. Anna wasn't ready for the end, but neither was she brave.

She stayed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Ch 2 Rating Warning: M for explicit scenes and swearing.**

**~2~**

**Now**

Elsa's watch alarm pitched its strident wail fifteen minutes to six in the morning; she pressed the tiny button and the wailing ceased. It took a little time to rise from the dark imaginings that had held her captive in the hours of night, and there was a faint taste of seawater on her tongue. She forced complete alertness upon herself; the moment of true beauty came with the dawn and she would not allow a lost day. Not like the bad time.

Anna was dead, her limbs exactly where Elsa had lain them.

The bed and breakfast was quiet. By necessity, Elsa was always up first. The softly swelling dawn barely illuminated their bedroom, the pale walls covered in Anna's handwriting, sentences written in red and blue marker, never black. Elsa stripped off her nightclothes, her left hand aching slightly, reading one of the blue ones:

_July 25, 2003 - a young man holding an acoustic guitar and smoking a cigarette. He played Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles for me. Cause of death: drug overdose._

Elsa bought a guitar for Anna for Christmas later that year; Anna had never told her she wanted one, but Elsa had still known. A guitar was something she had always wanted for herself but couldn't have, not with her bad hand, so she gave it to Anna. At least one of them could benefit.

This knowledge was a weapon of the unseen world, and she hated wielding it.

Elsa ignored the red marks on the wall as much as she could; they were thicker globs of writing, sparsely scattered over the walls. At last count there were 92 of them, small bloodened islands of red in vast seas of blue.

When she had finished disrobing, Elsa walked into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the shower, running the water until it was bright and warm. She pulled her platinum blonde hair out of the sleeping braid and ran her fingers through its lustrous locks. Returning to the corpse she had lain against, Elsa peeled the sheets from Anna's youthful body. Anna worked hard to stay slim; she would never sacrifice the taste of good food, so she had jogged relentlessly to keep the pounds from forming. She adopted yoga long before it became hip, and how Elsa had loved to watch Anna's beautiful and youthful body gliding through the poses.

Naked, Elsa lifted Anna the same way Kristoff had last night, under Anna's shoulders and knees. Hefting the body, she shuffled into the bathroom. Getting Anna under the hot stream of the shower was an easier process now than it had been a few years ago; Kristoff had finally renovated away the bathtub and shower combination the inn came with and replaced it with a spacious shower stall. Before then it was a devilish process lifting Anna's dead limbs over the lip of the tub.

Of course, even that was an improvement on the bad time. Thank God for Haley and her sharp memory.

Thank God Haley was coming home. That was at least one thing Elsa could be glad about.

Now it was easier to hold Anna upright as she set Anna's feet to the ground and shimmied them into the shower. Clouds of steam were already advancing through the air, looking for the absent mirror to assault. Sunlight steadily continued to build momentum beyond the fogged window. Elsa positioned herself and her burden in the middle of the shower and waited. Where Anna's limbs pressed Elsa's skin, her breasts, her thighs, her arms, she was cold. Anna was always so cold at dawn.

Anna was dead.

Elsa slowly turned until the spray hit Anna's back and she wrapped her arms about Anna's waist to hold her upright. The body had no intention; Anna sagged in Elsa's arms. She glanced at the waterproof clock on the shower wall; it was exactly six am. In four minutes Anna's brilliant teal eyes would open.

The longest four minutes of Elsa's day.

Delicate droplets of spray condensed on Anna's eyelashes that she couldn't blink away. Under the influence of water, Anna's red hair looked peculiarly dark. Water, heat, and steam enveloped them in a dense blanket. There was only the small and mullioned bathroom window to fog up. No mirror, not now, not ever.

Outside the range of the spray Elsa's back was cold. In their next renovation, whenever they could afford it, Kristoff would install shower heads on the other end of the stall. It would be an improvement, however minor, because such victories had to be celebrated when the fortune teller could not be found.

So Anna was dead, and would stay dead, and there was nothing they could do about it but wait for a red night.

If Elsa could have known about these awful consequences she would never have gone with Anna to the fair. The sound of the calliope had been so brash and invasive, the crowds unfeeling mobs, the stench of grease and cigarette smoke strong. This fate was unimaginable back then, relegated to fairytales or stories of fiction. Now it appeared that there was indeed magic in the world, and that some destinies were writ in stone.

Elsa knew hers, for it had been completely diverted, and all because of the beautiful girl she held in her arms.

The water was still blessedly hot. They never ran out of hot water at the inn. Bless his heart, Kristoff would never grumble about the water bill, not even in winter when tourism was down and guests were few.

As she waited for these four minutes to end, Elsa tried not to think about where Anna was coming from. She wondered if Anna had a blue night, or a red night. She prayed for blue, though there were more clues for tracking the fortune teller in the red. The first moment would show her; would it be a scream or a sigh?

Neither of them could bear the sound of a calliope.

6:04 am.

Elsa lived for these moments of awakening. First Anna's body flushed with pinkness, heat and blood. Her eyes slowly opened, became focused and clear. Her fingers twitched about Elsa's waist. Her head had been lovingly tucked by Elsa's neck; Anna softly kissed the ridged scars on Elsa's throat. Lifting her face, fine mist painting a halo about her head in the morning light, she looked into Elsa's eyes and asked the same question she asked nearly every morning for the past nine years.

Every blue morning. Red mornings were screaming mornings.

"Am I Anna?"

"Yes."

"Are you Elsa?"

"Yes."

"Are we alive?"

"We are now."

No matter how many times Anna had heard these responses, they always seemed to soothe her. Her blue-green eyes were always so heavy with devotion in the morning, grateful and meek, as if she couldn't really understand why Elsa was standing in the shower with her at the breaking of the dawn. As if it were a surprise to see morning sunlight through the veiled bathroom windows, soft and evanescent.

Elsa knew that Anna missed the sight of the moon at midnight, cresting through the clouds like a corsair through ocean fog. The stars no longer chased themselves across the sky for her.

They could no longer make love at night.

Some days, the red days, Anna wouldn't ask why Elsa stayed with her, unless she should hear an answer that would further fracture her severed soul. Elsa would never betray her like that. For her, the answer was simple.

She loved Anna more than anything in the world. The lithe woman in her arms had been her salvation, time and again. Elsa would bear this pain and a thousand others to see Anna smile, to feel Anna's mouth against hers. They were bound to each other now in great forgings of steel.

Daily enduring these nine hours and four minutes was the least Elsa could do for her love, seeing as Anna died every night at nine o'clock, shining briefly like a fallen star. Elsa brought her back to life every morning in the shower, for water was the lubricant of the unseen world, transportation more sure than shadows or mirrors.

Yet however tightly they were bound to each other, Anna was similarly bound to the unseen world. Even if they could find the fortune teller, even if they could somehow command the cessation of this awful curse, would Anna even return to her, or would she stay dead forever?

Finally there was blessed hot water on her own back as Anna turned her around, her fingers warm and soft about her waist. Elsa lifted her hands to hold Anna's face and she planted a warm kiss on her lips. This one kiss led to another, and Anna pulled her even closer, her hands roaming up to plunge into Elsa's long and wet hair.

Elsa tilted Anna's face; she kissed the crest of her jaw, moving steadily upward until her lips met the small scarred nick in Anna's ear, one of her favourite parts of Anna's body. She was always grateful for that scar, for what the scar meant.

Such a tiny thing, surely inconsequential. Just a nick, really.

That little scar represented the two percent shift that forever changed the course of Anna's future. That little scar, leading her to Elsa, and to death every night, and rebirth in the water.

The debt was deep.

Anna's smile was wicked and low. More water, more steam, and Anna pushed Elsa against the back wall. Pinning her hands behind her back, Anna kissed her hard, in near-bruising intensity. The love-hunger of the night before was back in full force and Elsa gasped in wondrous watery breaths. Anna's mouth began to move lower, and her tongue traced the maze of scars that crisscrossed Elsa's throat.

Better. Faster.

Wetter.

Her hands began to trace the outline of Elsa's arms as she worked her way ever lower down her body. Her mouth captured the hard nub of Elsa's breast; Elsa arched her back and neck in response. Anna used the slight opening to thrust her arms behind Elsa's back, pulling her even closer. With the hot water beating on them, Anna continued to kiss Elsa's body, her mouth on her breasts, her stomach. Elsa still had her head back, her eyes closed, her hands resting on Anna's tight shoulders.

Anna came back up slowly, salaciously drawing her wet breasts along the curves of Elsa's body. Elsa opened her eyes. Anna's face was flushed, her eyes velvet and endearing. "I think I adore you," Anna said.

"You think?" Elsa teased. She caught Anna's arms and swung her against the other wall of the shower stall. Pressing her body against the hard and curvy body of her partner, Elsa kissed Anna as she thrust her thigh between Anna's legs. A slow and torturous melding ensued, aided by Elsa's slick fingers, curling up and inside, always _up and inside_, a rhythm imposed by the tempo of their breathing, and kiss after kiss was placed upon the landscape of their lips.

A low explosion rocked Anna's body; she had to break the kiss and lift her head in order to breathe. Elsa ground against her for a moment longer, drawing out the exquisite sensation. She stopped when Anna embraced her, her arms so strong, so hard, so very loving.

"I love you so much," Anna whispered. "Thank you for not forgetting about me."

A moment of quiet, lit only by the beating heat of the water upon them, and the beating tempo of their hearts. Elsa held her even tighter and spoke into Anna's abraded ear, "I will never forget about you."

Anna believed her, and kissed her one more time, deep, insistent, and grateful. Soap followed in this comfortable quiet, and they shampooed each other's hair, taking every opportunity to caress, to smile, to share. So much time was lost in the shadowy prison of night.

Even though the day had just begun, Elsa knew that night would come too soon. It always did.

**Then**

Anna's desire for a divorce came from nowhere as far as Hans was concerned. They had been married for three years, and those years weren't all that bad. True, they had to move into the boondocks of Maine, away from her friends in Bangor. True, she could only find work as a gas jockey, but that didn't really matter because he made enough money for the both of them. True, their love life had always been stilted and difficult; she blamed it on what had happened to her as a child.

She did not go to bed with him that night. She sat in the living room with all the lights off, sipping tea and thinking. Around 2 in the morning Hans came out of their bedroom and sat next to her on the couch. "Can we try to fix it first, please?" he asked. "I love you, Anna. Things can be better, I promise. Just tell me what you need."

Anna couldn't articulate it. She knew what she needed, but how could she say it in words?

She needed him to be beautiful.

She needed to be brave.

And she had learned throughout life that she never got what she needed.

His eyes pleading, empty platitudes crossing his lips, she eventually went to bed with him, endured his needy kisses and ached for any sense of a new dawn. When morning came it was as if nothing had happened the night before; could he really sense nothing of the emptiness between them, the vast chasm that had formed not in moments but in three long years?

Everything he did was distant and perfunctory; he took the lunch she packed for him without saying thank you, and kissed her on the cheek before putting on his steel-toed boots. Out the door without any goodbye, any_ I love you._

Just as well. Anna couldn't say those words, either. Not with the image of that dead dog hovering in her retinas. Not with hatred and desperation curdling her tongue.

He was angry when he got home from work later that day. "Why didn't you tell me what happened at work yesterday, Anna? I had to hear it from Steve. Don't you realize how I looked when they asked me how you were doing?" He flung his lunch cooler on the counter, and the lid clattered noisily to the floor.

"You didn't ask," Anna replied, a lump of dismay in her throat, tears threatening like a thunderstorm behind her eyes.

"I shouldn't have to ask," Hans replied, motioning for her to pick up the plastic lid. "Why can't you just talk to me? None of this would be happening if you could just learn to talk to me! For fuck's sake, Anna, you are my wife!"

Anna's insides twisted and churned, acid racing up her esophagus. He was right. Why couldn't she talk to him the way she needed to? After an uncomfortable and menacing silence, Hans continued in a softer tone, "Were you just scared, Anna? When the guy pulled the gun on you? Is that why you asked for a divorce?"

Mounting a heavy assault against the lump in her throat, Anna managed to say, "What if I just don't love you, Hans?"

"That doesn't fly with me. You must have loved me once. You agreed to marry me, you know, it's not like I dragged you to the altar. Your own dad married us, don't you think he would have known if you were unhappy? We can find it again, you know. Or am I such a bad person that you can't love me at all?"

The thunderstorm of tears finally broke, and she cried a little as she said, "You're not a bad person, Hans. I just want... I don't know what I want!"

Liar.

"Please, we'll get counselling, I'll be a better husband, just don't decide something that affects the both of us, okay? We should work it out. Everyone has their hard times. Your parents did once, and they managed to work it out. Anna, please?"

Thinking of her parents brought no relief. Divorce wasn't really in the vocabulary of a parish priest, especially over such hokum as falling out of love. Hans had the audacity to call her parents that night, and they were less than pleased at the turn of events.

"You owe him, Anna, and you owe God. Marriage vows are not to be taken lightly. You need to try to fix this before you even consider getting a divorce." Her father's voice brought out the chills within her, as it always did. Anna tried to pretend that she didn't care about their words and their stance in the matter, but their betrayal wounded her to the core. She was intuitive enough to realize that this was the same betrayal Hans was feeling at her hands.

For a brief moment Anna wished Hans would hit her again, just to give her a better reason to leave. No one could fault her then.

"If you leave him, who will support you?" her dad asked. In the blank spaces between those words she heard what he was really saying: if she left Hans without at least trying to fix things, if she left so precipitously and without cause, she could expect no support from them, financial or otherwise.

Happiness was overrated. Vows should be impenetrable.

In other words, suck it up, buttercup.

They knew Hans was lazy and unambitious. They knew his college degree mouldered in a drawer while he worked on a construction crew all day. They knew he spent his empty hours on the refurbished computer, content to build characters instead of building relationships. They even knew he monitored every penny she ever spent, even the ones she earned herself. They would not consider any of this as abuse; hadn't she grown up similarly?

The black eyes and various bruises stayed hidden from them, as well as Hans' more disturbing bedroom pleasures.

She was stuck with him, here in a town far away from her friends. Here Anna's needs and dreams mouldered in a drawer as well, her talents obscured by a patina of minimum wage and loneliness. All of this apparently was no good reason to get a divorce. She couldn't tell them or anyone else about the plain-faced gunman and the resulting nick in her ear, or the dead dog, or the truth that clicked in her brain when she saw it.

She couldn't tell her pious father that there was no God, and no hope of happiness in the afterlife. There was only now, and then.

With imploring words, with tear stricken eyes Hans pleaded with her to stay, and to try.

So she stayed. She had chosen this life when she chose Hans, she might as well suck it up. Others had it far worse, and she knew it. A new routine emerged; he occasionally brought home flowers, kissing her on the cheek and not flinching at the latent smell of oil and gasoline. They went to dinner and the movies together, holding hands in the darkness as they had during their short courtship. He showered with her, and roughly made love to her, she endured it.

At the first stirrings of spring Anna fetched a shovel and buried the dog. Dirt finally covered his mocking smile. She would not pray over the grave. There was to be no conversation with the big bully in the sky, if he even existed at all. Her non-relationship with the deity of her childhood was one of the few things she had control over.

At odd moments stark loneliness would strike her, even when she lay cheek to cheek with her husband in the night. All the world softened with the warmth of spring, yet her heart remained frozen.

All too soon they fell back into the habit of eating dinner to the symphony of the television screen, the mindless clattering of forks and knives in perfect stilted harmony. Hans always ate too quickly; she spent hours creating meals that were devoured in minutes without comment. She should have known better than to try and save her marriage with food. After all, this was the man who callously chased prosciutto e melone with cheap beer and had a fit when he realized how much the delicate Italian ham cost.

She found herself on her hands and knees one blazing summer day, illustriously mopping the floor with Pine-Sol and tears. If she looked at the gleaming floor, she would see yet another bruise on her face. Her life was nought but this single unlovely track, stretching before her without end or mercy. She was chained to her marriage by her cowardice, by a sense of inertia and complacency.

There was no heaven, just as there was no love. Not for her.

More nights spent with her legs open and her heart shut, his kisses needy and unbearable. Then he slept, grunting and murmuring in the sheets, his words of endearment falling upon deafened ears. Anna slipped from the bed and stood naked in the darkened living room, the curtains shut against the street lights, and she could only hear his distant snore and the relentless ticking of the clock.

Anna stood there, convinced that if she ran naked through the streets of Ashland she would still be ignored. If she screamed at the top of her lungs no one would hear her. If she should find the right razor or the right gun and quietly disappear from the world she would be as unmissed and unsung as the nameless dog, rotting in an unmarked grave.

One final truth eluded her.

The ripple effect, the influence of humans upon each other. She had a profound influence on so many of the tertiary characters of her life story, but she couldn't see it. She was blinded to it.

Her soul continued to wilt, and she would contemplate death with greater fascination. In her morbid fantasies the soft urge of suicide would caress her, and she would wonder what music they would play at her funeral, what words they would say, what mark she had made on this world so it would even acknowledge that she had come and gone.

She was only twenty three years old.

And then came autumn, the world a bright canvas of reds and oranges and yellows, and woolly thyme creeping over the slightly raised grave of the dead dog. How could there still be beauty?

Another catalyst came on a day like so many others.

Anna was sitting on the stool behind the cash register. The door between the station and the garage was always kept open now. A panic button had been installed under the counter. Dave, his bicep muscles popping as he flexed them, had threatened major hurt on anyone who tried to hurt Anna again. She did not talk overly much about her deteriorating marriage with any of them; Dave, Gary, or Rajinder. One didn't speak of such things when banging beneath the hood of a car, as they all taught her the mechanic trade and praised her for her adept hands and clever mind.

Sergeant Carter came through the doors that day, her hair out of her standard ponytail and blazing like the sun in its heaven. Recently off-duty, still in her uniform, the woman flitted into the station as if a breath of fresh ocean air. Seeing her brought that horrible day back to Anna's mind.

"You all right, Mrs. Markham?" the sergeant asked as she set down her purchases of potato chips and soda. Her voice was devastating in its solicitude.

Anna couldn't answer over the thickness in her throat. Her hands were grimy and oil spotted; Dave had been teaching her a few tricks with engines and alternators. Her hair would never be more than this dull crimson, her eyes no more than washed out ocean. What a pathetic thing she was next to this radiant and glowing woman, where the universe would be overjoyed to sparkle in her eyes, where men would cast jackets over puddles for her angelic feet, where two minutes spent in her presence would be an addictive drug, always wanting more.

Did Anna need Hans to be beautiful?

Or did Anna need to be beautiful herself?

"I'm fine," she eventually managed to say, after ringing through nearly all of the purchases. There was a flash again of pity and warmth in the officer's eyes, and the glance was no healing salve; it was a knife scoring through all her carefully laid defences, laying bare the great wound over her soul.

"I hope so," Sergeant Carter replied. She touched Anna on the hand before she left.

Anna watched her until she disappeared, and then for some time Anna looked at that spot on her dirtied hands where the Sergeant had touched her. A tide within her soul was rising. All she needed was one more catalyst.

It ended up being as surprising as the gunman and the dead dog.

* * *

><p><em>I hope you enjoyed these first two chapters. From now on I'll post one a week. I welcome all your comments and reviews!<em>


	3. Chapter 3

**~3~**

**Now**

"What do you remember?" Elsa asked, somewhat hesitant. Her fingers fumbled a little on the buttons to her blouse, for her left hand was sore.

They were standing in the sunlit privacy of their bedroom. The bed was still unmade; Anna would get to it later. Anna paused in the act of pulling on her shirt, her mouth a thin line. Elsa asked the question because she had to; gently grilling Anna on her dead night was a standard part of their day.

Silence grew taut and thin, like pulled taffy though not nearly so sweet.

Elsa finished dressing and moved to her vanity. There were two markers on it: red and blue. She picked up both, even though she knew already what sort of night Anna had just come from.

She turned to face Anna, whose eyes were open but focused on their off-white ceiling. Just as she was about to ask another question, Anna replied, "It was a child, a boy. He had a scrape on his forehead, and fresh rips in his clothing. He was holding a very old and battered soccer ball."

"How old was he?"

"Sevenish."

"Did he say anything to you?"

"'Tell momma I promise not to run in the road agin, okay, lady?'" Anna recalled, her face tight.

At least it was in English, though Anna had become quite adept at mimicking the sounds of other languages when necessary. Couple that with Elsa's dedication to research and the absolute magic of Google, and they were sometimes able to identify those who came to Anna in the night.

In the Marketplace of Souls.

"He was hit by a car?" Elsa asked. It wasn't likely a hit and run - that would have constituted a red night, not a blue one.

Anna nodded.

"Did he leave a message?" Elsa asked.

"No more than he already said," Anna replied, her voice weary. Elsa held out the markers; Anna took the blue one and turned her attention to the piebald walls. She stood in quiet contemplation for a moment, trying to bring reason to an unreasonable night. Finally she found an empty space and wrote in her clear and smooth hand,

October 4, 2010. A seven year old Caucasian male, likely American. Scrape on his forehead, tears in his clothing. He held a soccer ball in his hands. Cause of death: hit by a car. "Tell momma I promise not to run in the road agin, okay, lady?"

Elsa could have been happy this was only a blue night, and not a red night. But even the blue nights were restless nights.

Dead nights, and no stars.

Two years ago Elsa had taken Anna up north in the middle of the winter, flying first to Edmonton, Alberta, and then on to Yellowknife, and finally to Tuktoyaktuk. This small town was north of the Arctic Circle, and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. They had saved for the trip for five years.

And there, in the season Elsa hated most, in the land of blasting winter and endless night, Anna got to enjoy the moon and the stars, even while dying at nine every evening and reborn at six in the morning and glorying in every moment of it. They saw the northern lights at noontime, and heard the howling of the sled dogs. Deep and bitter cold, too cold for trees, Anna was sublimely happy, and Elsa was happy for Anna's happiness.

Some legends claimed that the northern lights sang.

And there they made love at midday, to the crooning of the northern lights and the everlasting stars, as if it were truly night.

Anna turned away from her wall-writing and relinquished the pen. They bought them in bulk from the local arts store and the girl at the till was no longer surprised at how many they bought or how fast they went through them. Elsa turned to put them away and Anna caught her hand.

Surprised, Elsa looked at her partner, so devilishly young, so fair and beautiful. In a few more years they would have to move again. Anna didn't get about much in the town, but agelessness only went so far before it was noticed. When they met ten years ago, Elsa was younger than Anna by two years.

Now Elsa's 32nd birthday marched closer, peeking with vengeance around the corners of the calendar pages, and Anna had not aged a day. She was arrested in time at 25 years old. As each year passed it became harder for Elsa to keep her greatest fear a secret; she did not want to add to any of Anna's burdens.

Uncanny knowledge was granted through the unseen world; Anna could not read minds, but that didn't stop her from being so damned intuitive.

For Anna pulled Elsa back to her, lightly squeezing the hand with the markers in it, lifting her free hand to touch Elsa's face. Those questing fingers touched her temples and then ran down the sides of her face. A thumb brushed against the lattice of scars at Elsa's throat before wrapping in the platinum majesty of Elsa's loose hair.

"You are so beautiful," Anna said, pulling her softly forward, her fingers irresistible. Soft lips, too soft, too fresh, too damned young, brushed against hers before pressing harder. When Anna pulled away from the kiss, her teal eyes were vivacious and sparkling.

"Am I presentable?" Anna asked, slowly turning around with a wink and a shimmy of her hips.

The sun was rising, and their small bevy of guests would be wanting the breakfast that came with their bed. Yet all Elsa wanted was to lay with Anna within those sheets of Egyptian cotton, for Anna's body wasn't cold nor dead just now, and she could kiss her and love her and every moment would banish her fears. Surely one day Anna would find her repulsive and aged, with wrinkles and varicose veins and the other dread marks of time that would never appear on Anna's body.

But Elsa didn't often get what she wanted, at least not the way she wanted it. She wanted to be the same age as Anna again.

She wanted to love her at midnight.

So the markers were put away, and Anna stood behind Elsa's chair to brush and braid her glorious mane of hair. Her own messy mop would be put into a single ponytail, at least until after breakfast. Then the women looked each other over, smoothing a pant leg here, adjusting a collar there, details a mirror would have shown them, once upon a time. "Do you know if Haley is home?" Anna asked as they left their room, hand in hand down the hallway to the kitchen, the smell of fresh coffee borne through the air on the wings of the soft radio.

"Kristoff said her flight leaves this morning," Elsa replied as they entered the kitchen. The huge bay windows faced the ocean-side groves and gardens, and the rising sun filtered unevenly through dawdling autumn leaves. Renee must have woken early this morning and been to the gardens; there was a bouquet of freshly cut flowers, resplendent autumn blooms. The entire room was cast in an aging organic warmth; copper pots and pans and bunches of drying herbs hung from the ceiling over the interior island. The graces of the thriving world outdoors were giving a final grand performance before heading into the wings as winter took center stage. In time the snows would come, the ocean would scream, the guests would stay away, and nights would be even more unbearable.

Elsa hated winter, just as she hated the sound of a crow, the whistle of a calliope.

Renee smiled at them as they entered the kitchen, her long brown fingers wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee. Her black hair was also pulled into a ponytail, and her almond-shaped green eyes were as exotic and alluring as always. Kristoff was likely still asleep in their bed; now that they no longer worked a farm, he was not the morning person as he had once been forced to be.

And as much as Elsa also liked to sleep in, she was certainly a morning person now, not entirely by her choice.

"Good morning," Renee said quietly.

The kitchen hadn't fully woken up yet. For some reason they always spoke softly in the kitchen just after dawn, as if nature were whispering secrets they had to strain to hear. Soon enough the room would arise for the day, along with their guests, but until then they each adopted the quiet.

"Good morning," the women echoed, and their hands finally parted; Anna to the drawer to pull on an apron, and Elsa to the coffee machine. By ancient tradition Anna abstained from coffee in the morning, not for any mystical sort of reason. Caffeine did remarkable things to the steadiness of her hands, and a trembling, jabbering woman wielding a kitchen knife was not advisable.

One morning after a red night, when Anna had finally calmed herself into a state of near exhaustion, she allowed herself a small cup of coffee to help perk her up. The pancakes had salt in them that morning instead of sugar, and the mystery of the guest pouring on reams of syrup was solved when Elsa tasted them.

Yet even surfing the waves of coffee-induced madness Anna was a far better chef than Elsa would ever be.

Anna's movements were swift and quick, darting like small birds. The swift wrap around and tie-back of the apron, the double down of the edge over her slim waist, her sleeves rolled and clear; Elsa watched, a little needle of familiar envy rising within her.

Anna was glowing.

The morning light filtering through the trees seemed to imbue her with vitality and strength, as if the universe itself commiserated with her on those lost hours in the unseen world, and sought to repay her with gifts of youth and beauty. Such high cheekbones, carefully shaped eyebrows, blue-green eyes brilliant and clear. There was a hard and near painful surge of desire in her gut as Elsa looked at her lover, knowing that while others could feast upon Anna with their eyes, only she could feast on her with her mouth.

Only during the day. Never at night.

Anna caught Elsa's eye and leered at her.

Only then did Elsa notice that she had paused in the act of pouring her cup of coffee, and the hot liquid was nearly overflowing the mug. "What are you thinking about?" Anna asked innocently, and Elsa jerked her hand, slopping some of the coffee on her aching hand and on the floor.

Renee chuckled as Elsa pulled a wad of paper towel from the dispenser to mop up the floor, her cheeks crimson with equal parts embarrassment and despair. Anna's intuition was near legendary, and her ability to correctly interpret thoughts and feelings was a strange gift, given of her time in the unseen world.

If they found the fortune teller, and broke the curse, would Anna be willing to give up all these gifts for the taste of starlight on her skin, for the sight of the moon at midnight?

If she stayed alive at all?

Please God, let her live.

When Elsa rose from the floor, Anna touched her arm, drawing her gaze. "Even this won't last forever, Elsa," she said quietly. "We'll find a way."

"It's been nine years, Anna," Elsa replied. "How can you still have faith?"

"Because I have you." Anna softly kissed her, and squeezed her arm before returning her attention to the creation of breakfast for their guests. Elsa sat down on a stool, nursing her burned hand, watching the vastly intricate kitchen dance between Anna and Renee, as eggs found their way into skillets with bunches of herbs and onions, fresh hash browns with cheese, steamed asparagus with hollandaise, and always the rising and beloved smell of new bread from the oven.

Kristoff eventually joined her, and the siblings sat in uncomfortable silence, looking at the women they loved and the beautiful autumn day but never at each other. The calendar hung on the wall, a testament to the inexorable flood of time and Haley was coming home empty-handed.

**Then**

There was an unopened library book in Anna's lap, for she was watching television with Hans. He had taped a number of Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes and they were watching them together. Anna hadn't overly cared for Star Trek, nor Star Wars, nor Starsky and Hutch or any television programming. Spending time with each other had been one of the goals of their marriage-saving; advice dispensed not quite freely by a marriage counsellor.

It was September of 1999.

Dishes congealed in the sink, and the beer in Hans's hand was beaded with condensation. Anna watched the TV screen without seeing it at all, remembering only the soft touch of Sergeant Carter upon her hand earlier that day and the maligned agony that swept her soul as a result. She was only peripherally aware of a tide rising within her, a great earthquake that would cause her world to rearrange, coastlines evolving, whole continents spreading and drifting and anchoring anew.

A new universe had spun in Sergeant Carter's eyes.

A scene unfolded on the screen with soft intensity. It was so unusual it drew her attention completely.

There were two female officers, and they were kissing each other. The kiss was fraught with history and hardship and love, and the sight of it flensed all of Anna's muscles. For a moment she could scarcely breathe. A hard knot of loss and joy cramped Anna's stomach as she pretended not to stare at the screen, trying with all her soul to remain nonchalant while sitting next to her spouse. She could not evince any interest, but the scene was scorched into her mind with an incredible burning.

It was the final catalyst.

Her eyes were wide in the spaces of that night, her husband sleeping next to her, for she was haunted by this rising tide, this wellspring of emotion and hunger. The world, once so callous and cruel, now wondrous and strange, called to her, whispering of love, calliopes and seawater.

Whispered of beauty.

After Hans left for work in the morning, Anna pulled on a light jacket and walked through the woods, down that now familiar path that led to the slightly pebbled mound of dirt over the dead dog, overrun with weeds, grass, and flax.

"My choice," she whispered to the mound, as if the dead dog within it could hear her or even care.

Her heart burned for the months she had lost, the courage that always seemed to elude her. Seeking to define herself by the attentions and perceptions of others, there in the drained lassitude of the weary world and in the company of a rotting dog, Anna realized that in twenty three years of life she had failed to accomplish a single notable thing.

The dirty dishes were still in the sink, despite Hans's promises to help in the kitchen.

Hans's characters had long since conquered their fantasy world; he had found another game to occupy the stretches of time between work and sex and sleep.

He occasionally brought home roses, but they were no substitute for devotion or attention. Meals were eaten in the mind-numbing glow of the television screen, and he wolfed down ahi tuna on jasmine rice with sesame ginger sauce the same as he did microwaveable meals. They drank beer, never wine.

Her hands grew grimier and more learned under the hoods of cars at work. Dave and Gary doted on her while pretending not to. The radio spewed country songs and melancholy.

The millennium was approaching, and the frantic gyrations of her paranoid society would call it the end of the world. Did Nostradamus dream of this when he composed his ramblings, knowing that his own prophecies would be skewed, twisted and sold to these desperate fools? Tabloids shrieked of his prophecies, of bat-faced demon children, of the digital viruses that would crash the computers of the world, sending the stock markets into a deathly spiral and every economy in the world flushed down the same drain. Panicked shoppers stocked up on beef jerky, distilled water, and shotgun shells.

Anna didn't believe in God or the apocalypse or even herself.

She only knew that she needed a kiss.

When she returned from her walk that day, Anna turned on the television. Frequently looking around her, as if to prove that Hans had indeed left for work and she was as alone as she was going to be, she found the exact spot on the VHS tape that held the key to her future.

After six or seven revolutions, Anna turned off the television, the torture of the scene suddenly far too much to bear. It was exquisite in its beauty, haunting her, tormenting her with her choice.

Restless, aching, Anna turned instead to the new library book, chosen for the pretty fake picture on the cover and the promising blurb on the back. Titled "The Ledger", the book opened with a line that branded itself into her consciousness forever.

_The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all._

She was living a caricature of life. Skewed, hollow, pointless.

Anna read the line six or seven times, until the words branded her soul and settled deep into her psyche. Only then did she close the book and look at the name on the front cover. A.E. Cannon. She flipped to the back, but there was no picture. She wouldn't send a prayer to God in thanks for the words of this unknown person who had unwittingly shaken her world. She refused to pray, for both God and heaven were dead, and felt guilty for it.

The timid do not live at all.

There was a nick on her ear, a scar to remind her how closely death stalked the living, as if envious of light and substance. There was crabgrass over the mound of the dead dog. Dying was her single greatest fear, for there was no heaven, and she had never been kissed. Her dreams were locked in a drawer of her own devising. Once upon a time she had been capable of much more than this.

Anna needed beauty, and it was perilously absent here.

And she finally realized that Hans could never give her what she needed. No one could.

It would be a gift solely from within.

Anna spent the rest of the day packing, evaluating her meagre possessions and stowing them away. She made a pot of macaroni and cheese for supper; it was cooling slightly when Hans arrived home.

His eyes went wide when he saw the boxes. He smelled of dirt and cigarette smoke, and his face was ruddy and wind burned. "Anna?" he asked, setting down his lunch cooler.

It nearly broke her heart to see him so vulnerable. Bemused and stricken, he stared at the boxes and she remembered how he looked when he had taken her dancing on their second date. The music had been too loud, their conversation was stilted, and he worried incessantly about not making a good impression. The depths of his attempts had warmed her heart, and she was twenty years old, and all her friends were getting married and producing children, and she was tired, so very tired of being the one hanging near the wall.

His attentions were heart-warming, and his future promising.

When they finally kissed, some time later, Anna could remember her father's sermons. Fear had risen like bile within her as they kissed, but she had shielded it.

"Why are you doing this, Anna?" he asked, near collapsing on the chair.

Anna sat across from him, her stomach knotted and fierce, her eyes barely able to meet his gaze. "Why can't you believe that I just don't love you?" she asked. "Don't you hate this, too? We're practically strangers. You deserve better than this, Hans. You deserve better than me."

"What I deserve is a wife who doesn't pack her boxes every six months," he shot back. "Why am I so terrible to you? Where the hell do you think you can go? And how on earth are you going to survive without my money?"

It was as if her own father had delivered the insult.

Anna's hands were gifted. They could debone a chicken as easily as replace a carburetor. Yet all she could make with them was $5.75 an hour. Her nails were cracked and thick, her fingers rough and stained with oil. With two years of general studies under her belt and three years of gas jockeying, she wasn't exactly educated or erudite. How was she supposed to survive without his money, his support?

Happiness was more than the cherry on top.

It was necessary.

Anna quietly packed deep into the night, systematically scouring the house for those things that had been hers before their marriage. Her possessions filled twelve large boxes and no more.

Dave and Gary were not surprised when she handed in her resignation the following day. "You've been unhappy for a long time, Anna," Gary said as they tinkered under the hood of a battered Corolla. "You certainly deserve better than him." Anna handed him a crescent wrench, her heart thick and her throat tight with fear. She still didn't consider herself overly brave.

They gave her all the shifts they could in her last two weeks, but it still wouldn't be enough money to jump start her new life. Anna pawned some of the items in those twelve boxes and spent every available hour in between on the Internet, looking for a new place to live. Somewhere that had no bad blood memory for her, a new place, exciting, intimidating.

Time and again her eyes flitted down the coast of Maine, to a town called Bath. It was only vaguely familiar as a bathroom stop on the way to New Hampshire for the summer holiday when she was a child. The want ads were not particularly promising, but at least there were some cheap apartments. She kept looking, but felt no driving need to return to Bangor, nor any desire to move away from Maine.

Bath it would be. Small, safe.

The seawater called to her.

Moving day arrived and Hans left for work in stony silence. Her hopes and dreams were packed away with all her belongings; she could hardly wait for the moment to open them and bring them to the air. With a careful and illustrious hand she could wipe the neglect away and see her bright and hopeful face reflected in the gleam.

Her future would be bright.

She had to believe it, or else she would go mad.

Once her parents realized the depth of her resolve, they begged her to come and live with them for a while. Displaying fortitude far greater than she thought possible, she said no. In the end they did not help her move; it was Gary who drove up in a company truck on moving day. He slipped her an envelope, later opened to reveal five crisp one hundred dollar bills; a parting gift from everyone at the garage.

When Anna looked at the back of the truck, she could have cried. Their attentions scorched her soul.

In the back of the pickup was a bed and mattress, a small dresser, an overstuffed paisley chair from the wicked seventies along with several boxes of assorted necessities; new towels, reading lamps, pots and pans. Anna stammered and fought back mutinous tears as the burly mechanic adroitly manoeuvred her meagre possessions into the back, lashing them secure with tarp and rope.

Then four hours of open highway, lined by avenues of trees that applauded for her with showers of leaves, every mile cementing her new future, unknown, terrifying.

Essential.

That night, Anna stood in the middle of a decrepit open space. The ad had been misleading; the "cozy loft" was nothing more than a ramshackle bachelor's suite, walls exhaling second hand smoke, painted with a thin veneer of ancient hamburger grease. Water marks slowly conquered the ceiling and the heating register drooled and moaned.

It was perfect.

The following morning she locked the door behind her, more out of habit than any desire of material preservation. She walked out into the growing gentility of a Maine September day, hoping that the sting of fresh air would relieve the hamburger grease and stale tobacco scent of her freshly laundered clothing. It was not a short walk to the Patten Free Library, yet she enjoyed every minute of it, watching the men and women sauntering to their jobs, relaxed and happy.

The library rose from the ground with the aristocratic airs of seeded nobility; half of it built at the turn of the last century, and the rest still smelling of construction and paint. The landscape was abraded, waiting for the touch of spring for renewal, fresh sod and new flower beds to cover the tracks of construction equipment.

Inside, she delighted in the smell of the books, scents as precious to her as mandarin peels or fresh bread or pine needles in spring. She wandered through the library, her smile small and grateful. When she consulted the want ads of the local paper, she discovered that there was plenty of work for grunts such as she. There was always work for girls who were separated from their husbands for no good reason.

Anna was about to return to her grease-laden junk hole when she noticed that the library itself had an opening: Library Assistant, Circulation.

Did the future swallow her, promise her the taste of seawater and an abiding hatred of calliopes?

Anna didn't realize that destiny, like a mighty river, could be diverted with the careful placement of a single pebble.

She was Elsa's pebble, and didn't know it.


	4. Chapter 4

**~4~ **

**Now**

Kristoff and Renee took the radios before they left to go work outdoors; Haley hadn't phoned yet regarding her flight home. At Elsa's insistence, they also wore bright orange vests over their clothes. Hunting season for quail and pheasant had already begun, and there was a family down the road who poached off-season deer as often as they could. Elsa promised to radio them the minute she heard from Haley and then they left with a bevy of pruning tools. In a sheltered dell down towards the water Renee was coaxing topiary to animated life, in the form of a dolphin leaping over a fountain. She had begun the labour-intensive work the summer they arrived here, six years ago.

The guests were also expelled from the inn in a long and content sigh; the couple from Regina to go on a lobstering tour, and the lone older gentleman named Tim to a chair near the doused fire in the common room where he could see through the open door into the kitchen. He had generously applauded breakfast when it was served in the common room, and looked into the private kitchen as often as he could. He was a reader, though he fancied himself a writer, carrying a spiral notebook everywhere and jotting notes in a spidery hand. He had shown Elsa some long-hand of his work when she expressed polite yet distant interest; she instantly found it pedantic and overflowing with honey and resultant bile.

Elsa was glad to know he would be checking out today, though he seemed to be the type to wait until the last moment before the check out time of eleven am as possible, pilfering apples from the fruit bowl that lived on the table nearest the kitchen and staring at her when he thought she wasn't looking.

It was almost as if he knew who she really was, though that was impossible. She protected her identity with every device imaginable.

Elsa didn't look even remotely at him as she and Anna gathered all the breakfast dishes and then shut the kitchen door. Anna set down her stack of plates and yawned. "Honey, you should get some sleep," Elsa said. "It will take all day for Haley to get home."

Anna was putting the butter and preserves back into the fridge; there were no leftovers. "I know," Anna said, her voice cracking even in the short reply. "I just miss her. I don't know why she goes to visit her parents at all, it's not like they can notice her."

"It's as good a pretence as any to get some research done. Besides, her parents can't notice her, but her sister certainly does." Anna blew a rather rude raspberry and Elsa nearly swatted her with the towel. "Behave, you minx," Elsa teased.

"C'mon, it's not like Patricia's the assistant to the governor of Alabama or anything," Anna replied. Elsa lifted an eyebrow and Anna laughed. "Okay, so she is the assistant to the governor. It's still no reason to treat Haley like dirt."

"Preaching to the choir, honey," Elsa answered, turning on the taps. The inn had a dishwasher, but Elsa actually liked doing the dishes by hand. It was a quiet, serene time of the morning where she could immerse herself in her thoughts as her hands were immersed in water. The cathartic release was not entirely spiritual; the warm water always felt so heavenly on her damaged hand.

Light filtered through the yellowing leaves and the kitchen window; Elsa could see her thin and wavering reflection in the glass. Though she stood just behind her, Anna remained invisible.

Anna reached for the coffee machine.

This time Elsa did swat her with the towel. "Not a chance, Anna."

"C'mon, Elsa, I need a little pick-me-up. I don't want to miss Haley's phone call."

"Pancakes with salt, Anna? Ring a bell? The synchronized walking while talking and walking into the wall?" Elsa dipped her hands into the hot water and then lightly flicked her fingers at Anna's face. "Scoot. Have a nap. You'll be able to see Haley tonight."

Anna seemed about to protest until the canyon of another yawn appeared on her face. A night spent dead was still exhausting, there in the blue.

Red was far worse.

Anna finally fled, leaving Elsa to the pile of dishes, to the small snoring of Renee's ancient dog in the corner, and to the whirlpool of her thoughts. There, in the blessed monotony of simple tasks, Elsa could lift her mind from the cares of her everyday world and delve into the world of her stories, ready to meet and greet her characters, to sit with them on comfortable couches and ask them to continue telling their stories.

From the time she was a small child, Elsa knew she wanted to be a writer. It took a very long time for her to accomplish her dream, after much hardship and sorrow. The only saving grace of seemingly endless night was the time spent contemplating her characters and working on her novels. During the day she would think of them, of the latest plotline, of the last conversation, and during the night she would write. Her editor, Beth, was always surprised at how prolific Elsa could be when her mind was focused. She was also consistently surprised at the inventiveness of Elsa's plots.

The corny adage was actually true. Truth was stranger than fiction. If she ever penned her and Anna's story, it would be marketed as paranormal fiction, not memoir or autobiography.

She had rarely had writer's block as bad as she did now.

Elsa did the dishes, trying to coax out a shy secondary character named Tara, who worked as a nurse at a hospice. Yet Tara stayed away, because Elsa could only remember the scent of Anna's hair on the beach last night, the feeling of sand between her toes, and that piercing brilliant light when Anna died.

Worry struck her then. They were no closer to finding the fortune teller now than they had been years ago. Even if they found her, could she possibly be convinced to remove the curse?

Guilt often followed her worry. She could still see the moon at night. She had no right to complain of her lot in life.

And then anger followed her guilt. She hadn't chosen this life - it had been chosen for her.

Guilt always came back again, her emotions playing bumper cars in her mind until she could remember the shriekings of the teenagers at the fair, the smell of hot oil and cigarettes, and the layers of makeup on the face of the fortune teller.

Haley was coming home. They could start searching for the fortune teller again, as soon as Anna had a red night.

More worry. How long would all of this last?

And if it should last forever, how old would she look when she died? Would that young and fresh and tantalizing Anna still be around to mourn her passing, even though she would be a crinkled and wrinkled and old-person smelling thing?

Elsa paused, looking at her wan reflection in the glass. It took a lot of effort to keep her body lithe and slender, to keep the advancing hordes of aging skin at bay. She flicked water from her fingers and lightly touched her breast, still firm, still high. Anna had suckled on it just this morning, sending her body into a rolling explosion of delight.

Cub, Renee's ailing Borzoi dog, lifted her head and growled low in her throat.

Elsa turned around in time to notice Tim's face retreating from the window in the kitchen door. She tracked his movement, her heart frozen, watching as he took another apple from the fruit bowl on the common room table. He buffed it carefully on his sleeve before retreating back to his chair.

Had he seen her touching herself? Had he been watching her this entire time?

The thought filled her with revulsion and a tiny taste of fear. Thank goodness he was checking out in a few hours, off to peddle his slapdash prose where it would be appreciated, among honky tonk bar patrons or prison inmates.

Elsa resumed washing the dishes, and she could feel his gaze like a ray right through the kitchen door, through her clothes, frying her skin beneath. Skittish and nervous now, Elsa could no longer concentrate at all on character development, and Tara retreated back to whatever corner she hid in while she waited for Elsa to discover her life.

Elsa wished she could just write. Life had been relatively uncomplicated, once. She used to be able to own a mirror. She used to sleep in on the weekends. She used to fantasize about the paranormal world, use it as a vehicle for her writing, never believing it was real, never believing it would swallow her whole and spit her up on a bleak landscape of terrifying unwritten rules and shadowy adversaries.

She never believed in fortune tellers, in hauntings, in hoodoo or poltergeists.

Now her published work was the best it had ever been.

The price for such imagination and brilliance had been too much to pay. Night was coming, and Anna would die, and there was nothing Elsa could do except wait and pray.

She really hated God sometimes.

Deep in reflection, her ear always tuned to Cub's breathing or to any noise from the near-stalker, she nearly shrieked in surprise when the phone rang. In the sudden jangle of nerves, a plate fell from her wet hands and shattered on the floor, sending Cub up in surprise.

"Sorry, sweetie," Elsa said as she stepped over the crockery to answer the phone. Please let it be Haley. "Breakwater Bed and Breakfast," she said automatically, hoping, hoping.

"Elsa?" came the boisterous reply.

Thank God for some things.

"Haley, it's great to hear your voice. Are you coming home yet?"

"Stupid airplanes. We were left sitting on the plane for an hour last night while they fiddled with something or other, and then they decide to up and cancel the flight."

"Better safe than sorry, isn't it?"

"I had my rabbits foot. We would have been fine."

"Honey, I don't doubt your faith in the appendage of an ancient rabbit, but you can't expect others to believe like you do. Most people don't believe in Santa Claus, either."

"Hey, I should have called him for a ride. I'm sure he would have gotten me home on time."

"I doubt you would have reached him. He must be in the Bahamas this time of year," Elsa laughed. "And the reindeer have probably overindulged all year and are in training now for the big day."

"Santa wouldn't be so cruel as to put his reindeer in training. Not with the belly he has. He'd be a hypocrite, and everyone knows he isn't a hypocrite."

Elsa's smile got bigger and bigger. "So are you coming home or what?"

"Yeah, I'm waiting in a very uncomfortable plastic chair in the Montgomery airport and everyone around me is uptight. Freaking business travelers. Like the world is going to end if they don't get to their meeting on time. Maybe Trish, excuse me, Patricia, taught them about all that. She'd rather cut off a finger than be late for a meeting with her boss."

"Sounds like you had a real bonding experience while you were home."

"I feel bad for even thinking it, but I sometimes wish someone would give her a frontal lobotomy."

"You could just ask Santa to give her a new personality for Christmas."

"I'd ask for a new ass first, Els. Somehow I don't think Santa keeps either of those things in stock."

"Have you tried eBay?" Elsa asked innocently, returning to the now lukewarm water and the diminishing pile of dishes, careful not to step on the broken plate. Haley laughed out loud, and in the background Elsa could hear some incomprehensible instructions from the loudspeakers.

"They're calling my flight, honey," Haley said quickly. "I've got a connection in Charlotte, and another in Philadelphia. If all goes to plan, I should hit Bangor at 6 pm. Is Kristoff coming to pick me up?"

"Anna and I will try to make it. Barring that, it will be Kristoff and Renee."

"You don't need to risk it, Elsa. I'll be seeing you both tonight. Besides, Kristoff might let me drive, and then we'll get home twice as fast, as long as I can evade police detection."

"Safe flight, alanna," Elsa said, her heart warm and aching for her best friend. The Irish term of endearment was something her father had often called her when she was a child. Alanna was a term of depth and beauty, and Elsa could practically see Haley's wistful smile on the other end of the phone.

"See you soon," Haley replied, and then she hung up.

Her head buzzing, Elsa finally turned her attention to the broken dish on the floor. The edges gleamed, wicked and torn and sharp, and in them she could see her reflection, fractured.

Only later would she look back on this broken plate and see the omen hidden within.

**Then**

Air fresheners were waging war against the latent smell of her apartment, and they were steadily gaining ground. It helped that Anna's cooking was a ready ally; the smell of old hamburger grease got fainter as she cooked with garlic and butter and more vastly exotic things. It had taken her a single day to unpack all her belongings and to buy a small assortment of groceries. After her foray to the library, Anna returned to her new home with a heady buzz of anticipation and fear in her chest. She had no computer at home; thank goodness she had thought ahead and produced her resume before leaving Hans.

That night Anna lay alone in her donated bed, with the haunted moaning of the despondent heating register, the curses in Spanish from the people upstairs, and knew she was better off. Moving up in the world, one step at a time.

She was nearly surprised in the morning when her phone rang. It was the first time anyone had called her since she left Ashland. She knew that even if it was a telemarketer on the other end of the phone she would try to cultivate a conversation. It felt strange to live alone, to have so little contact with other humans. She missed Dave and Gary already.

She almost felt guilty about not missing Hans at all. Almost.

"Hello?" she asked.

"Anna, it's Dave. How are things?"

Anna settled into her chair, tucking her legs beneath her and smiling. "Going good, boss. I'm all unpacked and I'm starting a job hunt today. Found some interesting positions here in town. How are things at the garage?"

"S'all good. Sergeant Carter asked about you yesterday. I told her you had moved out of the city. She wanted to give you a call, but I didn't feel right about just giving out your number without talking to you first."

Anna's heart gave a little quiver at the words, remembering the soft touch of the officer's hand, and the stricken and haunted words between two female Star Trek characters before they kissed. The depth of this feeling in her chest surprised her, as did her response. "Next time she asks, you can give it to her. She helped me, you know."

"Sure thing. Hey, I actually have an ulterior motive for calling."

"Oh, and here I thought you missed me," Anna teased.

"Not only me, Anna. Billy Carmichael brought in his muscle car and told us that he wanted you to fix it. Some hokum about the delicate touch of a lady's hand. When we told him you'd moved away, he asked where you were so he could bring his car to you for repairs."

"Lady's hand indeed. All oil-spotted and rough. I'm not so sure I'm going to go back into the auto mechanic industry, Dave," Anna said.

"So I figured," he said. "You are very talented under the hood; I swear no one could ease some of those cars from their tantrums but you, but there is so much more than this that you are capable of. I'm glad you're finally figuring that out."

Anna felt scorched again, deliriously happy and hurt at the same time. So much wasted time and buried dreams.

"Thanks, Dave," she said. "I needed that."

"Keep in touch, kiddo. We're all rooting for you. Though the next time you're in town, could you bring by some of those fabulous squares you do so well? The missus has tried your recipe at least a dozen times, but she can't ever make them quite like you. You must have some secret ingredient that she doesn't know about."

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," Anna replied. "And that probably wouldn't sit too well with Maggie."

"She'd disagree with that some days," Dave said. "I sometimes have to buy back good graces with roses and a bottle of Chianti."

"Try a robust California red, like a Cabernet Sauvignon, and see if that won't forever change her mind."

"You're the expert, kid. Talk to you soon."

Anna hung up the phone, feeling simultaneously exhilarated and terrified at the same time. She dressed in her other set of nice clothing before she left the house, locking it as she had before.

Feign bravery, intent of steel. Too confident, thus brittle and overdone. The resume was in her sweaty palms, and Anna slowed as she approached the library doors. She could easily find hours of amusement in the lawn that led sloped upwards to the building; the wooden bridge over the pond, the newly laid sod and the gleaming gazebo.

The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all.

Anna kept walking, almost wooden in her fear. She could not wholly imagine her salvation within these doors; to want this job so badly and not get it could break her already fragile nerves. The key was to be confident, but nonchalant. In actual fact the resume was disastrous - how to make gas jockey and grease monkey sound like prerequisites to Library Assistant, Circulation? How to play up being well read without sounding like a geeky homebody who was separated from her husband for no good reason?

Is that what they would think when they looked at her, that she was a silly little girl who should just run home to her man and try to get the oilstains from her fingers?

The wind was bitter, unseasonal, cracking the new grass. Anna forced herself to think of the frozen maggots on the body of the dead dog; she took a deep and fortifying breath, and walked through the doors.

Confident. Sure.

She nearly turned aside the moment she walked through the doors; at the front desk today was a girl with spiky black hair decorated with a thick purple stripe, and she wore black lipstick and black fingernail polish. Various piercings crawled up her left ear. Once upon a time Anna would have run away at the sight of someone like her; she remembered high school and the disdain heaped upon her by the popular kids as well as nearly everyone else. Those Goth girls, who liked to practice vampirism and experiment with dyes and tattoos, they had looked upon Anna with distant distaste, as if condemning her for even trying to fit in with the popular crowd.

Yet this girl's black tinged mouth with shocking pearly teeth cracked open in a genuine smile. "How can I help you?" she asked in a soft lilt of the genteel South. Anna instantly wondered what circumstances had arisen to bring her here, to conservative Bath, of all places, where vampirism was relegated to horror films and black lipstick only used on Halloween.

"My name is Anna," Anna began, and then she abruptly sneezed.

"Gesundheit," the girl immediately responded, whipping out a tissue-box for Anna's nasal salvation.

"Danke shoen," Anna replied, taking a tissue and applying it to her wind-abraded nose, inwardly triumphant at being able to respond in kind. She knew no German but this and a few other key phrases, but there was no need for this girl to know that, was there?

The girl did seem to look at her a little deeper, a smile so big it seemed to dissolve in the bright paint of her eyelids. Then a pause, because there was the slightest hint of friendship and camaraderie there, a sensation so unexpected and warm that Anna had to blush.

Holding forth her resume like a battering ram, confident and fragile, Anna continued, "I'd like to apply for the position of Library Assistant, Circulation."

"You're not from around here, are you?" the girl asked as she took the paper from Anna's trembling hands.

"No, I just moved here from Ashland," Anna replied, wondering if she had the strength or the courage to delve deeper into her story.

"Not exactly a step up, I'd imagine," the girl said, displaying another winning smile before quickly perusing the document. Anna wasn't about to protest, though she watched the girl carefully for any hint of depreciation in her eyes, as if her narrowly gained stock in German phraseology had suddenly plummeted with the words "gas jockey". No such action took place, and the girl quickly stuck it in a folder with several other, more detailed and certainly qualified pieces of paper. She could almost imagine those papers, all muscle bound with experience and age, beating on her resume until it leaked from the folder in defeat.

"I'll make sure Gerda gets it," the girl promised.

Knowing she could ask no more of her, though she wished she could say more words to her everlasting benefit, to convince this painted girl that she was far better than anyone else in that pile, all Anna could do was walk away, her throat thick with apprehension.

Anna had no desire to return so quickly to her greasy quarters, so she decided to stay a while longer, take some time to get to know the books in their stacks and the general layout of the library. She could caress a book or two and place herself within sight of the front desk so when the mysterious Gerda appeared, the Goth girl could point her out and reveal that the gas-jockey knew a little German and was the most obvious choice for the position at hand.

A.E. Cannon's book had long since been devoured, so Anna used the near-obsolete card catalogue to see if there were any other titles by the same author.

It was there, standing by the rows of little boxes, her jacket on a nearby chair, her face flushed and alive, her fingers rippling quickly and decisively through the soldiers of cardstock, that Anna became aware that someone was looking at her.

She lifted her head and noticed a young woman sitting at a lone carrel at the back of the room, near the windows, her form barely noticeable through the stacks. Her platinum blonde hair was enjoying a heated love affair with the autumn sun, every strand caressed until the edges shone like spun gold. The woman had barricaded herself behind a veritable castle of books, the titles of the tomes as intimidating as the small frown on her face. Kierkegaard, Milton, Bronte, and Dante - Anna had to stifle a giggle when she noticed Stephen King among them.

The woman had a pale, elfin face, a silken scarf around her neck, the rest of her body hidden by the stacks and the obstacle of piled books. Her eyes were a brilliant blue, standing out like sapphires in the alabaster of her skin.

It was only a moment they shared that glance, a moment when their eyes met for the first time. Flushing, the woman quickly returned to her papers and her pile of books, and Anna looked back down at the card catalogue, seeing words but not reading them.

Anna was aware of her now, and grew incompetent under the imagined gaze. Unable to find anything to pique her interest, she finally shut the little soldiers away and retreated into the stacks, still looking at words without reading them, wondering if it could be her hand filing these books away, her nose smelling their delectable scents as if stories of land and sea could emote such fragrance, her feet zigzagging endlessly through the rows upon rows of books.

Finally choosing Stephen King, thinking it best to celebrate local talent and to discover whatever enchanted the blonde woman in her tower of books, Anna sat down in a cozy chair and began to read. She was soon as lost in the story as poor Trish McFarlane was in the wilds of the woods. She did not notice the purple-striped girl at the front desk talking animatedly with her director and finally pointing at her, nor did she realize that the castle-book-woman with shining white gold hair frequently glanced in her direction.

Fate was coalescing around her as lightning rods drew the storms.


	5. Chapter 5

**Two chapters at once, just because I can! Enjoy!**

**~5~**

**Now**

Tim was scritching away in his notebook, so Elsa softly fled to the inner sanctum of the inn, the two-way radio in her hand. She paused a moment, looking into her bedroom. The room was muted against the sun with drawn curtains, making the marks on the walls nearly decorative. Anna was asleep, snoring softly, tightly hugging a body pillow. Elsa's throat clenched to see her partner merely asleep in those sheets and not dead as she was at night.

Precious, innocent sleep. Elsa was envious of it.

Not wanting to disturb any of Anna's rest, Elsa retreated further down the hallway, down to their own private living room with fireplace. She could hear Cub padding softly behind her; the white-furred Borzoi dog curled on her dog bed near the dormant fireplace as soon as Elsa sat on the recliner.

"Kristoff?" she asked, after pressing the radio button.

"I'm here," came the softly delayed reply. "Did Haley call?"

"Yes, she's expected in Bangor at 6 pm. Do you want to get her?"

"Sure, Renee and I can go pick her up, if that's what you'd like."

"We better play it safe. Besides, Haley said she could drive home."

Kristoff laughed. "Haley and her lead foot. We should really invest in a radar detector."

Elsa paused, thinking of Tim and the way he had looked at her. After a moment of silence, Kristoff asked, "Elsa, is there anything wrong?"

Elsa wanted to ask him and Renee to come home right now, to help check Mr. Near-Stalker out of the inn, but she knew it was a ridiculous thought. Who knew how deeply the two of them had meandered through their property, the acres of orchards and gardens a selling point nearly as dear as the proximity to the ocean. Besides, it was only her overactive imagination playing tricks on her again. The best friend of a writer, they said, and a very deadly enemy as well.

"No, everything is fine. Anna is having a nap. You guys will be back for lunch?" After such hearty breakfasts, and Anna's nearly daily need for a nap, lunch really meant two in the afternoon; well understood by her only surviving sibling and his wife.

"Yes, we will. See you soon."

It took substantial effort to leave the haven of their private portion of the inn. As Cub got up to follow her, limping with her arthritis, Elsa nearly asked her to stay there, but then felt safer with the dog at her heels. She made herself comfortable in the kitchen, paging through a book without seeing the words, waiting for eleven o'clock, glad to hear telltale noises of packing from the direction of Tim's guest room.

As she had suspected, it was eleven o'clock on the nose when he pulled all his bags into the entry way. He waited only a moment before dinging the small bell on the table where they kept a guest book, along with brochures about sightseeing in Maine. Elsa forced a distant smile on her face as she went into the entry way. "I hope you enjoyed your stay," she said, ringing up his tab. She couldn't quite bring herself to ask him to return soon, as she did with all her other guests.

"Thank you, Ms. Kelly, I surely did," he replied. "Good atmosphere for writing here."

"The coast brings all sorts of artists," Elsa replied noncommittally, yet a stab of fear passed through her. He couldn't know, could he?

She had to tell herself not to lock the front door behind him. She contented herself with surreptitiously watching his car pull away in a cloud of fallen leaves, hoping never to see his licence plate from Virginia ever again.

Quite a long road trip for a pedantic near-stalker on a writing retreat. Elsa wondered what his real profession was.

That worry, and all of her worries, seemed to fade into dimness when Anna woke up. The two of them cleaned the guest rooms together, speaking of this or that little thing. By another ancient pact, Elsa was the one to clean the bathrooms (a job Anna loathed) while Anna stripped and remade the beds (Elsa's nemesis).

"Any problems with Mr. Tim?" Anna asked as they finished up the room he had been using. Her face looked strained for some reason.

Elsa peeked around the corner of the ensuite bathroom. "No," she said. "Why do you ask?"

"Nothing," Anna replied. "I'm sure it was only my imagination." Elsa frowned and would have asked more, but she had her own suspicions and worries to keep close to her heart. Opening a two-way dialogue with this intuitive Anna of the unseen world could lead to revealing more than she had intended.

Elsa always protected herself. Always.

Kristoff and Renee returned from their work outdoors to join them for a hearty lunch of leftovers at two in the afternoon, and everyone grilled her on her conversation with Haley. Anna seemed distantly sad that she couldn't go pick up Haley from the airport, but it was more than a two hour drive to Bangor each direction. So many things could go wrong on the road, from a flat tire to sudden wildlife; a fact both of them knew all too well. It was better to stay home and not risk anything. Besides, Anna had planned a welcome-home feast for Haley.

By the time Kristoff and Renee left at 3:30 pm, Anna was up to her elbows in kitchen witchery. Elsa was very content to sip a glass of red wine and scribble in her own notebook on the kitchen table, a prop, really, because she enjoyed watching Anna cook. No matter how many ingredients she used or how fast she wielded her knives, Anna was always calm and serene in the kitchen, even dashing from pot to pan. That magical flush in her cheeks, the red hair up and away, velvet teal eyes sparkling and wondrously present; Elsa looked at her and tried not to think of the upcoming twilight.

"Dare I ask what you are making?" Elsa asked.

"Thought I'd try something new," Anna replied. "Haley's always adventurous."

"Haley would eat a camel if you cooked it right," Elsa laughed.

"Perilously low on camel tonight, I'm afraid."

"No camel, then. What is your substitute?"

"Goat," Anna replied, vigorously rubbing fresh pineapple over large chunks of now identified meat.

"Uh huh. Is it really easier finding a goat than a camel?"

"Not here it isn't. For some reason, everyone around here wants to sell lobster."

"They're a bunch of kooks. Why are you rubbing pineapple all over your meat?"

"It's a natural tenderizer. The enzymes help break down the cells in the meat, and it becomes juicier." Anna set the pineapple aside and began to layer the meat in a deep pan.

"So how did Kristoff find you goat?" Elsa dared ask.

"As soon as he mentioned some nefarious dealings regarding black market kittens, I told him I didn't want to know." Her partner began layering green chillies, salt, black cumin, and freshly cut cilantro and mint leaves over the meat. "I'm really glad that the new owner of the supermarket in town has started branching out with the produce."

"After your enthusiastic reaction, how could he not? I've never seen someone go into such hysterical delight over a fig before," Elsa replied, starting to feel a hint of the wine in her system. She watched Anna continue her near-mystical dance, her writing totally pushed to the back of her mind. Several dried leaves of garam masala and other spices went on top as well as a bunch of fried onions. "Um, really, what are you making?" Elsa finally asked as Anna covered the entire concoction with thick plain white yogurt.

"Hyderabadi Katchi Biryani with goat."

"Two words were English, right? With goat?"

Anna grinned. "Come here, you goof. Wash your hands."

Elsa got up and washed her hands, her skin tingling in anticipation. Then she stood by Anna, who gently pulled her in front of the pan. Standing behind her, her warmth tangible, her scent as bewitching as ever, Anna carefully took Elsa's hands in her own, and then plunged them both into the ingredients. "You always mix by hand, you know," Anna whispered, so near to Elsa's ear. "You know how they all say the extra ingredient is love?" her partner continued. "Bollocks. It's the hands."

Her hands wrist deep in the pan, turning the ingredients over and over, Elsa turned to look at Anna, supposedly to tell her lover that the word "bollocks" could only be used by the British, and that she was in copyright violation since she was not British, but found that Anna was kissing her instead.

It didn't matter how many hundreds of times Anna had ever kissed her before, imprinting herself on Elsa's skin, her scent, her soul, a tattoo over her very heart; every time was a beloved recitation of the first time. That had also been in a kitchen, surrounded with the fragrance of Anna's cooking, their lips coated with hot cocoa and cream. Now it was nine years later and Elsa was still entirely in love.

Anna completely surrounded her; their fingers entwining so delightfully in the pot all covered with yogurt and spices, Anna's arms about her in this embrace, Anna's lips kissing her in a slow and languorous fashion, no hurry and no fear. She pressed deep with gentle insistence, and Elsa could feel all her nerves igniting, one by one, each racing downward, inward, spiralling to the core of her, a hotter, wetter place. She let herself go, relaxing into the sensation, giving Anna the opportunity to see what sort of sounds Elsa could make by pressing here, by stroking there, exploring as if this were the first journey and not one of thousands.

Elsa could have wept for the glory of it.

To feel hot, to feel young, to feel desired and wanted and needed. Anna's fingers pressing into her palms, her lips and teeth fastening lightly on Elsa's lower lip before their tongues met in greeting. Elsa tilted her chin, recapturing Anna's lips now, drawing Anna deeper inside, feeling that heat, that wet, begin to blaze outwards from her core until it must spill from her fingertips. Every part of her felt connected to her lover; Anna's breasts hard against her back, Anna's legs pushing harder, pinning her to the counter.

They could kiss like this for hours, pressing deep, giving way, retreating and then hungry and then wickedly insistent for more. Stolen, heated breaths, the rustle of clothing, the far ticking of the clock and the rest of the world non-existent, in a moment where twilight and impending death simply did not exist.

Then Elsa became aware of Anna's eyes, the universe of ocean and sky, and the most precious heat was written in them; a wanting, an undeniable and volcanic urge.

And more.

The connection, an unseen chain of immense strength, baptized in seawater and anchored in love. The gift of making love to each other over the years had only strengthened their bond, so that in these times of doubt and fear, when twilight was a menace and dawn the only hope, Elsa could look at Anna and know she was alive.

It was Anna who was a wraith.

"Bollocks yourself," Elsa whispered. "It is love."

Anna slicked the ingredients from her hands almost savagely, Elsa following suit. An eagerness to tear off Anna's clothing rose within her, to taking the hard nub of Anna's breast in her mouth. Elsa could see the entire plan unfolding before her: she would propel Anna down the hallway and throw her on their bed. Once there she would pin her down and erupt inside of her until her eyes grew wide and she screamed Elsa's name.

This was need, the need to possess, to invade, to press inside and swallow, to taste and touch until the friction and heat would consume them both.

In the end, Elsa only rotated completely within Anna's embrace, about to start enacting her plan, when the front door slammed open. The wind chime from the porch softly accompanied the excited voices of the couple from Regina. Their faces would be wind-chapped and bright, daytime stars in their eyes mirroring the universe in Anna's.

Such was the magic of Maine.

**Then**

Anna was only aware of the book in her hands, the dire mistake of a little girl who decided to take a short-cut through the woods. As she read the words, Anna could recall the trees outside of Ashland, the slender paths downy and soft with fallen leaf and needle, the air crisp and near violent on her skin. She could see the slightly raised mound of the dog's grave, and taste of hope on her tongue. The library and everyone in it had passed away, including the magnetic attention of the woman in the carrel and the soft murmuring of the Goth girl manning the front desk.

A fake, carefully applied cough, and Anna looked up, realizing she was curled, cat-like, in the comfortable library chair, her shoes popped off her feet and her feet dangling over the edge, slowly bobbing in the tide of words flowing through the novel and into her skin.

The woman standing in front of her had the look of someone who had once been formidable, a shade more stout than slim, but for whom life now had the taste of weariness and despair. Her face was youthful, but for some reason the youth was jarring, unnatural, almost out of place on her torso and hips, thickened with age and much hardship. Her hair was severe, pulled back into a bun, yet there was no sign of grey.

The woman held out her hand. "Anna Blake?" she was asking. "I'm Gerda Maynard, the Director of Patten Free Library."

Anna tumbled over her feet in her attempt to rise and shake the woman's hand. It was a wry smile that greeted her back, a strong hand that engulfed Anna's enthusiastic shake. Anna was glad she had chosen to use her maiden name on her resume; the sound of it in her ears was like the rediscovery of a lost and precious childhood plaything, much beloved and much missed.

"If you have a minute to spare," Gerda was saying in all graciousness, very much aware of Anna's lack of anything better to do than get lost in a book, "would you come with me to my office? I have some questions to ask you about your application."

In her socks, fumbling into her shoes and draping her jacket over one arm, Anna followed the Director, painfully aware that her clothes still smelled a little like a fast food restaurant. She tried to tell herself that this was a good sign, that the woman had no need to be inviting Anna in to her office unless... unless she was about to tell Anna what a waste of time she was, and that no one who spent their previous three years being a gas jockey and a grease monkey had any experience in the slightest to offer a library.

Her mouth was dry and chalky. Anna tried to find a pocket of saliva to moisten her mouth with, but the apprehension was too thick.

The woman in the carrel looked in her direction as Anna followed Gerda through the library. The sun was still igniting her hair ablaze; almost too bright to look upon. There was a very small smile on the woman's lips as their eyes briefly connected.

Then the library wall came between them, and Anna was led past the genealogy room to an office upstairs that glowed in stale happiness, thin curtains drawn over the windows to keep out the youthful exuberance of the autumn sun, and the entire space buzzed with an undercurrent of financial queasiness, as if the taxpayer's hard spent dollars couldn't come this far. The walls were painted an unrelieved industrial yellow, and greenery of some genera was spilling from plant pots on the window sill. The desk was lightly cluttered with papers and a computer monitor that faced the back wall; the mark of a busy woman with many cares. There were several cheaply framed pictures on the desk that actually had no glass in them; one of a slightly younger Gerda with a plain-faced and jowled man, and one of a toddler sitting among the spectacular ruination of spaghetti and meatballs.

The child had golden curly hair and a wide smile. Noodles hung from her head like a wig.

Still puzzled and scared spitless, Anna took the proffered plastic seat across from Gerda, laying her jacket over her knees and trying not to look overly eager. Not knowing what to do exactly with her hands, she clasped them together and put them in her lap.

"You are new to Bath, Anna?" Gerda asked.

"Yes, I just moved here from Ashland," Anna replied, not wanting to spill any of the sordid story. She was determined to pass or fail this interview on merits alone, not on pity.

"Where you worked in a garage for three years," the woman continued, her voice even, no inflection whatsoever to hint at her thoughts.

"Yes," Anna replied, nearly clamping her jaw down over words that could spill all willy-nilly from her mouth thinking they would be beneficial. She would not babble in front of this woman. Would not.

"What assets would you bring to the Patten Free Library?" Gerda asked, tenting her fingers over Anna's one page resume and looking at her.

Calm. Composed.

Right.

"I'm very talented when it comes to systems," Anna began after taking a deep breath, almost surprised at the words that came from her mouth. She forced them to come out slow and clean. "Whether it is a computer system, an engine, or a complex recipe, I know how all the parts work together to make a harmonious whole. I'm also great with people, and I learn new things very fast."

"That's interesting that you would equate car engines with cooking and with the library," Gerda said. "You like to cook?"

"I love to cook, nearly as much as I love to read."

"What do you read?" Gerda asked.

"Just about anything in fiction," Anna replied honestly, "though if a book is too scary I'll have a hard time sleeping. I've dabbled in romance, though most of it is far too predictable. I could say I read the classics, but I find I don't have much patience for the language of Bronte or Austen. I also used to read a lot of fantasy, but I find it doesn't appeal to me as much anymore as it used to."

Dragons and dwarves and blood like cranberries. Hans sitting in his computer chair, hunched and oblivious.

Timid no more.

"The real world has more than its share of fantasy, doesn't it?" Gerda said softly.

Anna found herself looking at the woman again, really looking. There was that sadness, and that hard little needle of iron, all wrapped up in her face and in her voice. Anna found it difficult to determine how old Gerda really was; older than Anna, obviously, but to have a toddler so young?

What had happened to Gerda?

She nodded in answer to Gerda's near-rhetorical question.

"What happened to bring you here, Anna?" Gerda asked. Anna's cheeks burned and she ducked her head; Gerda immediately continued, "I'm sorry, it's none of my business. Please, forget I asked that. I do suppose I can ask why you feel your talents would be put to use here. I have already phoned one of your references, a Mr. Dave Blumel, who spoke very highly of you." Anna wished she could stop blushing, before Gerda could think that she was a fool. "He said you could get work in any garage you wanted." Gerda paused, giving Anna a little space, a little time to think and react.

Anna remembered the plain-faced man with the gun, and she touched the nick on her ear. "Do you believe in fate?" Anna found herself asking, and would have clapped her hand over her mouth in subsequent horror at her words would it have done any good.

Gerda didn't seem to mind the abrupt change in subject. She leaned back in her chair and replied, "Yes."

"I didn't have to come to Bath," Anna said slowly. "When I left my husband, my parents wanted me to come home to Bangor. I have friends there, or had friends. But every time I thought of my new life, my eyes kept coming here, down the coast, to Bath.

"And once I arrived here, the library pulled me in. First, as a resource to anyone who is looking for a new job. But the moment I saw the job posting and felt the thrill in my heart, I wondered if it was fate. I can't hope for a job like this, Gerda, to be among people, not cars, to feel the books, to smell them, to dive into them and their worlds. For a really long time I thought that being a gas jockey and grease monkey and a wife was really as good as it was going to get."

Gerda was watching her intently, as if she could actually see the words coming from Anna's mouth. "What do you think now?" she asked softly.

Anna paused, looking at the greenery, and then looking at the toddler in the picture. When she looked back at Gerda, her eyes were burning. "That your library is beautiful, and filled with beautiful people, like the purple-haired girl downstairs. Even if I don't get the job, I will still enjoy your library. Not too long ago I discovered that there was more to life than what I was experiencing, and the anticipation of that life means everything to me."

"Well said, Anna," Gerda said softly, after a moment's pause. Her smile got a little wider, and she leaned forward once more. Her washed-blue eyes were gleaming, and then she stuck out her hand. "Welcome to the ranks of the Patten Free Library, Anna Blake."

Anna felt a little clunk in her jaw as her mouth dropped open. Almost mechanically, she held out her hand, all callused and rough as it was, and it was enveloped by Gerda's similarly strong working hand. "You mean?" Anna breathed, her mouth suddenly all dry and chalky again, her chest inflated by a supersonic balloon of wild hope.

"I mean, if you would like the position of Library Assistant, Circulation, I would be pleased to offer it to you."

Anna's jacket spilled to the floor as she jumped to her feet. Before she could tell herself to back down and not be so scary, she had wrapped her other hand over the hand shake, pumping Gerda's fist up and down. Only then realizing what she had just done, her cheeks flushed crimson once more and she sat down again, fumbling for her jacket and apologizing.

Gerda chuckled, a rich and warm sound that lifted Anna's heart even further. "Let's introduce you to some of our staff, shall we?" she said, getting up from her chair and practically herding Anna from the little office.

Anna emerged downstairs feeling as if she had swallowed a rainbow and was about to vomit skittles. Anticipation and dread roiled within her as Gerda introduced her to her new coworkers. The symphony of names and positions and short histories was a din in her shell-shocked ears.

Finally the Goth girl, with the streak of purple hair and a heart as big as the ocean. "I'm Haley," the girl stated before giving Anna a hug.


	6. Chapter 6

**~6~**

**Now**

Upon hearing the light chatter of her guests, Elsa opened the common room door. They were sitting on the couch, limbs splayed in comfort with books and wine. "How was your tour?" Elsa asked as she restocked the fruit bowl and checked the status of the tea cupboard.

"We really enjoyed it," Virginia Chatham enthused. "I thought it would be too late in the year to enjoy being out on the ocean, but October is really quite beautiful here."

"What is October like in Regina?" Elsa asked, coming to lay a new fire for them, aware that they were trying not to stare at her left hand or her throat.

"Unpredictable," Monty Chatham replied. "Some years it's mild, some years not so much, what with the snow and the cold and the sudden need for every stitch of winter clothing."

Elsa sat on the hearth and began to lay out the kindling and wood in the way she had been taught by her father. "Regina is in Saskatchewan, right?" she asked.

"That's right. A place where it is so flat you can watch your dog run away for three days," Virginia laughed.

Elsa chuckled in response to the sudden picture in her head, and continued laying out the fire.

"What are you cooking in there?" Virginia asked after taking a sip of her wine. "It smells bewitching."

"Five words, two of which are 'with goat'," Elsa said, smiling. "Don't ask me what the other words are, my partner is the one who cooks." Elsa finished laying out the fire and stood up, brushing her hands on her jeans. "Can I get anything else for you?"

"No, I think we're fine," Monty said, leaning back against the couch. "Wine, book, fire; this is my idea of a vacation."

Elsa's smile grew even larger. "I should warn you, one of our family members is coming home tonight, so we may be a little loud. Feel free to tell us to keep it down should our celebrating disturb you."

Virginia laughed. "That's rather backwards, isn't it, dear? Usually the guests are the loud ones."

"Feel free to be as loud as you wish in response," Elsa said. "But seriously, your vacation is our top concern. We'll try not to get carried away."

"Oh, well, if you do, you could always make your peace by sharing whatever it is you're cooking in there with goat."

Elsa grinned. "Deal." She pointed to the far cupboard with her right hand and said, "Remember, there's plenty of tea and coffee should you want it, and there's a stereo with a selection of music. I hope you enjoy your last evening with us."

As Elsa made her way back into the kitchen she could hear one of them getting up to peruse the music section. Not long after she closed the kitchen door she could hear the earthy rumblings of Louis Armstrong along with the sultry croon of Ella Fitzgerald.

Anna was sitting at the kitchen table with her own glass of wine. There was a small amount of light coming from the stove, where the pot of something with goat was gently simmering. The sun had set two hours ago at 5:30 pm, and Anna's foot was tapping the floor in impatience. "The natives want your food," Elsa said.

"I've probably made enough to feed an army."

"Which, as I recall, is Haley by herself, especially after she's been back home for a few weeks."

"Oh, yes. Patricia and her diet of pink grapefruits, dried pita chips and hummus. I'm just glad Haley arrived okay."

Elsa sat down next to her loved one, leaning back in her chair. Kristoff had phoned just after six to say that Haley's plane had arrived, along with Haley and her luggage, and they were about to leave the airport to come home. Depending on which of them ended up behind the driver's seat, they could be home at any minute.

They didn't have much time. 9 o'clock was coming.

Anna's hand was on the table, so Elsa curled her cool fingers over it. "Any luck with the characters today?" Anna asked.

"Silly Tara. I know she's shy, but this is getting ridiculous. I know she's a nurse, she works in a hospice, but she's really not saying much else."

"Sounds like she needs seducing."

"Is that your answer to everything?" Elsa asked, arching an eyebrow.

"I don't mess with a system that works."

"Much to the dismay of Billy Carmichael," Elsa teased.

Anna made a face and stuck out her tongue. "I don't know how you always remember little things I said eight or nine years ago," Anna pouted. "Billy Carmichael and his muscle car? I haven't mentioned him in years."

"I don't mess with a system that works," Elsa echoed impishly, tapping her head.

Anna's foot started to slide along Elsa's leg in a game of footsies when there was a strong draft accompanied by an unmusical jangle of wind chimes.

"Honey? I'm home!" Haley cried.

A grin erupting on her face, Anna leaped from the table to collide with the small, pixie frame that was coming through the door. Elsa got up somewhat more conservatively, smiling to see Haley and Anna's homecoming embrace. Anna finally let go long enough for Elsa to hug Haley; she did so with immense warmth in her heart. "Welcome home, alanna," Elsa said.

"Glory, I missed you guys," Haley said in a huff. Kristoff and Renee were behind her, carrying her bags, and Cub was enthusiastically wagging her tail and licking Haley's hand. Haley dropped to her knees to give the dog a hug and a thump on the rump. "I'm also starving. I don't care what it is I'm smelling, but it better be nearly ready to eat."

"It's camel," Elsa said with a grin.

Anna smacked her lightly on the butt and said, "Forgive my partner. It's because she actually can't pronounce what supper is."

"What is supper?" Renee asked, moving to the stove and lifting the pot. A sultry and steamy exotic scent arose, whispering of elephants and ivory, of snakes dancing in baskets to the piping of flutes, of sterling light hitting the curved domes of the mosques.

"It's Hyderabadi Katchi Biryani with goat," Anna said, guiding Haley to the table and pouring her a glass of wine. "I'll be serving it with raita and pita."

Kristoff, outnumbered by women like usual, called out, "Hey, I understood the pita part!" as he took Haley's bags down to her room. Renee rolled her eyes with a wide smile and began setting the table. Elsa sat next to Haley while Renee and Anna set out the dishes and appetizers.

"How are your parents?" Elsa asked softly.

Haley's hair was entirely bubble-gum pink, and silver studs crawled up one of her ears. She wasn't wearing any makeup, probably because it was a travel day. Her lips looked almost odd without the black lipstick. "About the same," Haley replied. "They didn't really recognize me. I thought that they might, with the bright hair and all, but mom just called me a punk teenager and dad lectured me on my earrings."

Elsa sighed. Her mother fell victim to dementia first, and fate showed her sadistic hand when her dad developed Alzheimer's soon afterward. Every time Haley went home, she got lectured by Patricia on the duties of family, and how Haley should come home and take care of them as she was supposed to. Family loyalty went deep in the South.

Patricia never realized that she had given up her rights to Haley a long time ago. Haley was part of Elsa's family now. Sometimes blood wasn't a requirement. Only love.

And seawater.

"Did you get a chance to see any hauntings?" Anna asked as she set down a decorative bowl filled with the main course, the meat tender enough to fall from the bone, and the rice cooked to perfection. Renee, right behind her, set down the raita, a bowl of thick, creamy dip adorned with fresh mint.

"Went home to Andalusia to check the burial mounds, and then tested the story of the Prestwood Bridge," Haley said as everyone sat down around the table. She looked sideways at Elsa, a very careful and quick glance, and Elsa felt her heart sink. Haley had discovered something, and if she was not revealing it here, then it wasn't likely good news.

Anna, thankfully oblivious for once, began to serve the biryani, with the creamy raita dip on the side, and pita triangles for dipping. "What's the deal with the Prestwood Bridge?" Anna asked, serving everyone.

"You drive on to the bridge in the middle of the night and then stop on it. Legend says that someone will come and bang on your car."

"Did it work?" Renee asked.

"It actually did. Made Trish a little mad, seeing as I was borrowing her car at the time. Most of it was pretty light, more like tapping, but there was one loud thump that spooked even me and left a tiny dent in the hood."

"I don't know how you have the guts for that," Elsa said. "I'd be terrified."

Haley laughed in between mouthfuls and then brought out her lucky rabbits foot. It had been dyed green a long time ago, so now it was this washed out half green, half white colour. "I'm never scared when I have this with me."

Dinner continued with the small, light chatter that warmed Elsa's heart. When they realized just how much leftover biryani there was, Renee took two bowls to their guests out in the common room. She was beaming as she came back in. "They were dancing!" she whispered to them. They all paused to listen for a moment, and heard the melodic croon of Frank Sinatra, and smiled to think of their guests dancing together as if Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

All too soon Elsa had to tap Anna's shoulder, pointing at the clock. 8:45 pm.

"You guys go on, we'll clean up," Renee said, touching Kristoff's shoulder.

Haley hovered for a moment, unsure, but then Anna grabbed her hand. Elsa led the three of them down the private hallway to their living room. A fire was already laid out, and ignited easily when Elsa set a match to it. Then she sat near the end of the couch, and Anna curled inside her arms, facing Haley who sat down with them. Cub had followed them and turned three times before curling herself into her dog bed. Kristoff really wanted another a puppy, a boy this time, so there would be just a little more manliness in the house.

They wouldn't have too long to wait. Just like Gerda's daughter Casey, Cub was dying.

Haley looked vulnerable here, where the only light came from the snapping fire, her pink hair seemingly darker, secretive. Anna grasped her hand. "Are you all right, Haley?"

"Got real lonesome down in Alabama by myself," Haley admitted.

Elsa smelled the richness of Anna's hair and knew exactly what Haley was really afraid of. Her hair, her earrings, her clothes were all a charade, designed with a specific purpose: to see who would take the time to look further. Haley was nearly thirty years old now, and despite all her talents, all her love and devotion, she was alone. Only once had someone looked deeper than the reflection, and he had nearly ruined her.

Sometimes people were so obtuse. Blinded by the surfaces of things.

"Come here," Anna invited, opening her arms. Haley smiled and scooted in, the three of them all in a tangle of arms and legs on the couch in front of the fire. "We missed you, too," Anna said.

Silence now, punctuated by the hissing and popping of the fire, the not quite synchronous breathing of the three women. When Anna's watch alarm sounded, she turned it off without a word. Haley made to get up, but Anna held her tight. "Stay, Haley? Please?" Her voice, usually so confident and full of life, was tinged with the knowledge of a dead night, so imminent.

So Haley stayed, snuggling even deeper into the combined embrace.

Elsa shut her eyes. She couldn't bear to see it happen again.

The brilliant flash of light, the cosmic police whisking Anna's soul away, imprisoning her in the Marketplace of Souls, where only the dead had a right to walk, where the recently dead would cry out to her in voices of red or blue, screaming of violence or mere accident.

Dead for now, Anna's arms limply fell away from Haley's body; Elsa opened her eyes in time to see Haley drawing Anna's hands back over her and holding them in place. "Will it ever end?" Haley asked softly. There was an extra catch in her voice, some deeper sorrow as yet unspoken.

Fear made a fist of Elsa's heart, the fingers of it like ice and seawater. She could make no reply.

**Then**

In her first couple of weeks at the library, Anna discovered some very interesting things. First, there were nine full-time staff at the library, most of them matrons who liked to gossip in the staff room and vilify their husbands and neighbours. Anna didn't exactly feel like one of them, and Haley stuck out like a dandelion in a patch of roses. They bit their thumbs at Haley's often outlandish hairstyles, but none of them could deny the inherent sweetness of Haley's nature.

Haley didn't speak very often of herself. Anna respected that, for she didn't speak of her own past, either.

Second, Anna found an astonishing affinity for the computer system. Her comment to Gerda in her interview had been made of hope and supposition with a hint of BS, wanting to believe that she could ease a computer system from its tantrums the way she could soothe a car engine. That talent shone through, and she began the monumental task of putting the library catalogue online.

She never debated the worthiness of the long-time project, even though there were some who believed that the year 2000 would cause every linked computer system in the world to crash. It was only October, but New Years Day crept closer and the tabloids invented more and more outlandish reasons to prepare for the worst.

Third, the woman behind the book wall came every Tuesday and Thursday with military regularity. She wouldn't ever sign out the books, nor would she interact with the other patrons. She was never disrespectful or rude, just uninterested and distant. She also seemed to know the library better than just about anyone, Gerda and Haley included.

"Do you know her name?" Anna finally asked Haley one morning as she sifted through the pile of returned books and assorted litter. There was always a gum wrapper or a receipt or worse dropped through the return chute with the books.

"Whose name?" Haley asked, moving her mouse on the screen in the creation of a new library promotion. She was a wizard with web pages and graphics.

"Her," Anna said, determined not to point. She gestured with her chin instead.

Haley followed her chin's lead and looked at the girl with the platinum hair who was walking slowly down an aisle of books, searching for some sort of title. "Oh, that's Elsa Kelly. She keeps to herself. We think she's from out of town, because no one here knows her."

Anna was about to ask Haley to expound on Ms. Kelly with more detail, but Haley was called away by a carrot-haired kid who had a crush on her and needed her to explain how to feed quarters into the copy machine. With a long suffering sigh and a small roll of the eyes, Haley departed, leaving Anna to her mess of books.

Anna watched Elsa for a while, until the blonde woman retreated back to her carrel, which could not be seen from the front desk. It was early in the day, but the library was already buzzing with activity. In the newly constructed children's section, Gerda was reading to a group of preschoolers, her own daughter, Casey, among them.

The toddler in the photograph on Gerda's desk had curly blonde hair. This Casey was now four years old, and she had no hair at all. There was a bright blue bandana over her head instead. She had been diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia earlier in the year. As soon as Anna had heard the story, she understood Gerda better, though she wondered why Gerda said in her interview she believed in fate, if fate would deal such a hand as this. Did Gerda believe in God, or had she also discovered that there was no such thing as heaven?

Then again, fate had given Anna a plain-faced gunman and a dead dog and now see where she was.

Anna returned her attention to the books, laying them all in the cart for her to make her rounds. Other people dotted the library, peering here, reading there, cursing at the computers or furtively skimming through the romance novels, looking for the juicy bits.

Anna was deeply happy.

Out from the mediocre expectations of husband and family, Anna flourished. Walking home each evening was a delight, for she had discovered a beautiful world filled with beautiful women. The truly beautiful women were not the ones who emulated Julia Roberts and worked out a million hours a day. It was the lady who lived next door with her small son and jolly husband, herself plump and glowing. The woman who worked at the grocery store, consistently amazed at the produce Anna would buy and for the outlandish items Anna would beg for, whose friendly questions and interest warmed her heart.

And the woman in the carrel by the window that overlooked the Kennebec River, who came twice a week, researching for hours, prowling the stacks for just the right books, who rarely said a word to anyone.

Whose name apparently was Elsa Kelly.

The castle of books surrounding her today was dedicated to the Canadian province of Alberta. There were books on ranching, geography, the Calgary Stampede, along with a couple of titles by Albertan authors. Anna was always surprised by something in the woman's thought processes, for it was Michael Crichton who was among the pile today, along with several other books about dinosaurs.

Did Alberta have anything to do with dinosaurs?

At lunchtime, Anna heated up some leftovers to eat in the staff room, all cozy and warm though a chill wind blew outside. The women were talking about the impending doom of Y2K. For Anna it was a different fear that haunted her, not that the world would end (how could computers bring down civilization?) but that she wouldn't find the bravery she needed for the next vital step.

She had left Hans, she had started a new life, but she still had never been truly kissed. Not one single kiss in all her years that would cause her heart to flutter, her ankles to tremble, desire and need awakened within her like a ferocious beast. No kiss with Hans or any other boyfriend had ever given that to her.

Only now, remembering the soft touch of Sergeant Carter on her hand, and the haunting beauty of the female Star Trek officers, did Anna begin to fathom what she really wanted.

The idea terrified her, so she put it away.

Anna brought out the leftovers of a carefully planned and wonderfully wrought solo dinner. Next to her, Haley was eating Chef Boyardee, cold, from the can. "How can you stand that?" Anna asked.

"At least I can identify it," Haley replied, looking at what was on Anna's plate. "I don't know if I wanna know what all that is."

"Sarmale and salata de boeuf. It's Romanian."

"Um, does that equal cabbage rolls and potato salad? Because that's what it looks like. Sort of."

"Yes, but instead of using fresh cabbage, you use pickled cabbage, and roll in the mixture without cooking the rice first. That's how it looks so compact and tight when it's done cooking, because the rice has expanded."

Anna proffered her plate and Haley gamely took a bite. Smiling, Anna watched as Haley tasted it, milling the flavours delicately on her tongue, then swallowing. She found herself hoping that Haley liked it. Sarmale had a brash, insistent sort of taste.

"What do you think?" Anna asked.

"It's good. The pickling gives it a little zing. I like a little zing."

"Thus the cold Chef Boyardee."

"Not everyone is a master chef like you, Anna," Haley laughed, taking a forkful of the potato salad next. She chewed, swallowed, grinned and took another, bigger bite. "Did you ever take cooking classes?"

"No," Anna replied. "I just always enjoyed it. I like it when people appreciate my cooking."

"I would then dare to mention that your soon to be ex-husband was someone who did not?" Haley asked.

"You're very observant, Haley," Anna accused, smiling herself.

"It's called paying attention," Haley said, returning to her Chef Boyardee.

The matter of food was dropped for the moment, but re-entered Anna's mind as she took the heavily laden cart out and about to reunite books with their sundered neighbours. Deep in the stacks, she looked over to Ms. Kelly, who was alternating writing with a mechanical pencil, scratching notes from one of her massive pile of books, and taking bites out of a mournful looking sandwich.

Haley had told her all about the great library food debate of 1997, when the town and the directors finally agreed that responsible adults were actually capable of eating food carefully in some parts of the library. Never the archives, mind, or near any of the rare and valuable books. Eating and drinking by children was allowed only in the play area.

So this Elsa knew that she was allowed to eat food here, yet she ate crap like peanut butter and banana sandwiches? Didn't this Elsa also know that there was this wacky thing called the Internet, which would allow you to search millions of pages for information she was torturing out of these books?

Anna got an idea, and almost immediately squashed it flat. She returned her attention to the books, almost violently placing them in their homes, trying not to look at the woman in the carrel, whose hair shone like glacier snow in the sunlight, whose skin was surprisingly fair. Anna told herself that there was no way someone like her was single. And there was certainly no possibility someone as mysterious and enchanting as Elsa could love a nobody like Anna.

With that thought, a shiver passed completely through Anna's body, a cascade of ice water over her system, following by a swift glowing heat and apprehension.

She had never articulated her desires so clearly before even to herself.

Hiding behind the stacks, making sure no one was nearby, Anna peered through the books at the woman. Watching the love affair with the sun, the books, the lead in the pencil, Anna wondered what it would be like to be the object of such affection. Those fingers that handled the books so carefully, that would never lick a page to turn it, would those fingers ever touch her in the same manner? That book loving gaze, so focused, so clear, would she never look upon Anna's face in similar adoration?

Strange hunger and desire sucker-punched Anna in the gut. She remembered the kiss of Dax and Lenara on the television and despaired. That was fiction. This was her life, and there was a vast difference between the two. She stood there and stared at Elsa Kelly, withering.

The peanut butter sandwich lifted, a napkin wiping the corners of her mouth, the pencil scritching the paper.

Books waited to be stacked, restless in the cart.

Another bite, a swallow of water. A banana emerged, slightly brown and battered with neglect.

The sounds of the library receded, the chatter of the matrons, the children giggling and singing in the play room, the beeping of the check-out and register. A precious silence emerged, sacred with intention and purpose and hope. Anna's future blossoming, hope flowering, as she looked at Elsa's face, watched her set down the sandwich, banana, and pencil.

And get out of her chair.

Flushing, Anna broke the spell by returning her attention to the abandoned books, furiously picking one up and searching for its home. Elsa stretched, then turned towards Anna, and started walking right in her direction. Anna's face immediately started to blush, even though she sent frantic signals to her brain to cease that infernal response.

Stupid brain.

So she stood there, blushing and stupid, a book in her hand.

Elsa stopped a few feet away from her, disinterested, distant. She ran her fingers along the lettering of the books at the base of the spine, the Dewey Decimal System in all its glory, and found the desired tome.

She was not wearing a scarf today. Her throat was this creamy line of unsullied alabaster. There was a thin silver chain around her neck, and upon it hung a strangely familiar type of ring. It lay just below the hollow of her throat.

"Are you allergic to anything?" Anna blurted out.

As Elsa looked at her with a fair measure of confusion on her face, Anna's cheeks turned even more crimson, her ears joining in the circulatory fracas, until she decided that spontaneous human combustion was actually caused by people, like herself, who made monumental fools of themselves in front of beautiful women.

"I beg your pardon?" Elsa asked, blinking her eyes.

Might as well go through with your plan, Blake. She already thinks you're a freak, so what could be worse?

"I wondered if you are allergic to anything," Anna said gamely, pointing at the pitiful remains of the sandwich at the carrel. "You eat the same thing every time you are here."

"You've noticed what I eat?" the girl asked, perplexed.

"Never mind," Anna said, looking down at her bin of books. After a quiet moment in which she could feel the ray of Elsa's curious gaze, the woman retreated with her new book back to her fortified castle. Flustered and angry at herself, Anna quietly finished shelving the books, finally reaching the front desk with a near sigh of relief.

Near the end of the day Anna was standing at the front, helping someone take out a pile of children's books. Elsa walked past her, a backpack sagging on her shoulders. Then she paused, and turned, and looked directly at the flummoxed new Library Assistant, Circulation.

"I'm not allergic to anything."


	7. Chapter 7

**~7~**

**Now**

Midnight.

The fire in the private common room had died down to glowing coals, and Cub was a comfortable weight on Elsa's toes. She nursed a tepid glass of water while Haley told her story of her trip home; it was a prop as much as anything else, a reason to turn her glance away from the weary and bewildered girl in front of her, whose face was far too pale under her bubble gum pink hair.

Elsa would have to force herself to stop thinking of Haley as a girl. She would be turning thirty in only a few weeks. It was horrifying that she and Anna looked the same age now.

Elsa remembered the quick look Haley gave her at the dinner table, and knew that it was time to talk of things they couldn't speak of during the day. They could speak of these things only at night, when Anna was good and dead, when the world was dark and awaited its daily resurrection to sunshine and life. Haley turned the green rabbit's foot in her hand over and over again. The movements were strangely rhythmic, as if to a foreign and ancient cadence that only she could hear.

Haley had had a breakthrough while she was home.

"Where did you find her?" Elsa asked quietly.

Haley wasn't looking at her; she was looking beyond Elsa to the darkness that pressed against the windows of the inn, a curious and perhaps malignant darkness eager to hear stories of hurt and bloodshed. "Just over the border into Florida, in fact," Haley replied, adopting that same quiet. "The name of the town was Malone."

"How did you find her?"

"She certainly didn't have a web page. All she had was a small sign in the front window of her house."

"How did you know she was the one who could, you know, help?"

For her reply, Haley gripped her rabbit's foot even tighter, finally looking at Elsa in the eyes. Another wave of warmth and admiration flooded through Elsa as she looked at Haley, Haley who was so incredibly brave, able to stand on haunted bridges at night and not freak at the sound of noncorporeal knocking.

Haley, perpetually alone. Did she ache for the touch of a warm body at night, as Elsa did?

"I've been in this business too long," Haley was saying. "Just woke up the one morning knowing I needed to get into the car and drive. This was before the Prestwood Bridge incident, so Trish let me borrow her car, though I obviously couldn't tell her what I was using it for. She probably thought I was going to go get another tattoo or piercing at the mall."

Elsa looked away, sipping her water. It tasted a bit stale and old. Ancient hurt and resentment was deep in Haley's voice.

"So I got in and just started driving, you know? Before I knew it I was over the state lines and into Florida. So sticky hot down there at the tail end of September, with greenery so lush it's almost invading your senses like a hostile takeover. You could practically feel the spores climbing into your lungs. It made me think of those urban legends, where you accidentally inhale a watermelon seed and it grows vines in your lungs."

Elsa could see it, could fashion a story around the gory image, to market and sell along with the rest of her hidden work.

"I found myself in Malone, made precise turns here and there, and then I saw her house, in some tract housing of the sixties, a lawn made of dandelions and quack grass. The minute I saw her sign I knew I had come to the right place. And when she opened her door, she was not surprised to see me."

The rabbits foot was still being manipulated in Haley's hands. It had been a gift from Gerda, the year after they had met, the same year that Haley came to the library in Bath. It used to be white, until it got in the way of a St. Patrick's day celebration.

"What was her name?" Elsa asked. Cub was snoring on her feet, and the sound was comforting. Elsa wished she could hear Anna snore at night, but it was midnight, and Anna was dead.

"Nadya. She was tiny, and young. No older than me, or so it seemed."

Appearances could be deceiving. Just look between Anna and Elsa, who was supposedly two years younger.

"As a formality, she did a tarot reading for me, using a standard ellipse spread. I was just as interested in her house as I was in her. She had a picture of Christ on the wall behind her, one of those fantastically ornate pictures you see in Orthodox churches with the gilded gold paint, you know?" Elsa nodded. "The frame was flanked by tea lights on each side," Haley continued. "She also had a curio cabinet, with dozens of shot glasses from destinations like Vegas and New Orleans as well as wooden kissing dolls. I think the picture that clinched it for me was a photo of a winter scene, with half a dozen people outside under some trees. Some of them were dressed in shaggy bear furs and the others were dressed in sheepskin. It helped that there was a label under the picture, saying 'Urş şi Capra'. I googled it later on, to be sure of who she was."

Elsa could see her as Haley painted her in words. "She was Romani, wasn't she?" Elsa asked softly, coming to her own conclusion.

"We have been in this business too long, haven't we?" Haley asked, a rhetorical question with no comfort.

Elsa sipped her water, and the last of the fire died out, leaving only lamplight.

"I didn't need to hear the reading to know she was authentic," Haley said. She hesitated, as if worried that Elsa would ask what her tarot reading revealed.

Some things needed to stay secret; Elsa knew that well, so she stayed quiet.

"I asked her to do a psi retrocognition reading for me. She wasn't surprised that I knew the lingo, but I think she didn't want to do it. She charged me a hundred dollars, as if to scare me away with the price tag, but I had come prepared. I put the money on the table and gave her the ring."

Elsa had known what was coming, which of Anna's possessions Haley had taken, but her sip of water still stuck in her throat. Of course it was the ring. Hands, heart, and crown.

Let love and friendship reign forever.

"The minute she took the ring, she flinched and put it back down on the table. I put down another hundred dollars, but I think it was the look on my face that convinced her that I really needed her to go on."

Haley wouldn't look at her anymore, nor at the hungry darkness outside. She stared at her hands, and the rabbit's foot. When she still didn't continue, even after Elsa gave her some space, a heavy stone seemed to drop right into Elsa's stomach, weighting her down as if about to drown her in seawater.

Time hesitated, shy and scared.

"What did she say, Haley?" Elsa finally asked, somehow pushing the words through her scarred and abraded throat. Her tongue was rank with guilt and fear.

"I taped it," Haley said, bringing out her tiny digital recorder, the same recorder she used to tape all her supernatural encounters, all her interviews, and all the bloody recitations of red nights.

Despite the warmth of the slumbering fire, and Cub on her toes, Elsa shivered. She didn't want to hear it.

Be brave.

She kept her eyes open and averted as Haley scrolled to the correct file and plugged in the wafer thin speakers. The voice of Nadya, the fortune teller, was earthy and low; Elsa would have been surprised at it, seeing how young Haley said she was. Sometimes seeing meant nothing.

That's one reason she always kept her eyes open.

Yet after only a dozen words, Elsa cupped her aching hand around the device, tears pounding at her eyes and chest. "Don't make me hear it, please Haley?" she asked. "Not from her. Could you just tell me?"

Haley swallowed as she turned off the recorder, and then showed her brave heart once again. She clasped Elsa's damaged hand with hers, drawing Elsa's gaze, and said, "We may have gotten everything wrong, Els."

Her heart skipped a beat, and then resumed in a frenzy. Nine years of dead nights, all for nought?

"What do you mean?" Elsa breathed.

"We've been operating under the assumption that, if we found our fortune teller, the one who cursed Anna to begin with, and that if we got her to sever Anna's tie to the unseen world, that Anna would automatically return to the world of the living."

At 9 pm every night, Anna would be compelled to answer the summons of the fortune teller, and find herself in the unseen world. She was chained there, caged and mere property. Dead all night, Anna would stay there and be assaulted by the newly sundered spirits, both red and blue. Hordes of information could be imparted at night by these souls; did the fortune teller use this information to fuel her psychic abilities?

Was Anna her familiar, a spirit bobbing in the ether, whispering of otherworldly secrets? Knowledge was a weapon of the unseen world.

Only water, applied at precisely 6 am in the morning, could bring Anna back to life. Water was the lubricant of the unseen world, transportation more sure than shadows and mirrors.

Why those hours and no other, they still did not know. The hours followed her when they shifted time zones for their trip to the Arctic; it was always 9 pm, and 6 am, no matter where they were.

They could not fathom the reasons for Anna's capture and imprisonment. They had paid the advertised price, and they paid it in life and water, yet the outcome had unforeseen consequences. Anna was dead at night, and Elsa was so very weary.

Haley's last words, spoken so softly, seemed to reverberate and take on evil intent. Elsa was a storyteller; she knew how to read between the lines.

We may have gotten everything wrong.

"You mean that Anna might die for good?" Elsa whispered, hating having to say the words, hating the fortune teller again with a fervour she usually reserved for God alone, a hate that was nearly nourishing in its purity. "Even if we sever the tie at day, when she's alive, and not at night?"

Haley sunk deeper into the couch cushions, hugging a pillow to her chest. "When you cut the string on a balloon, sometimes it comes home, but sometimes it just goes away," Haley said.

More silence gorging on their pain like the blackness outside the window panes.

Shifting in her chair, Haley said, "She apologized before I left, you know. For the actions of 'her sister'. She also gave me all my money back, saying that she wouldn't take it, for it had been tainted by the unseen world."

More white space between those words, making them perfectly clear. Elsa sat up straighter, her jackhammer heart bashing her chest. "Then she knows? She knows the mechanism, the curse?"

"I wondered the same thing, and asked her to tell me, for God's sake, to tell me! She gave me back the ring and was already pushing me out the door, tiny thing as she was. I dug in my heels like some tantrum-throwing child and grabbed the door, begging her to tell me. She said she would not be implicated, that she could not bear to contaminate her soul, but she did say one last very strange thing before I was shoved out the door."

"What was it?" Elsa asked, knowing Haley would say it in only a second, but she just couldn't wait that long.

Or maybe she wanted to prolong it, because ignorance really was bliss. Wasn't it better not to know anything at all, and let your fantasies provide all the life and truth you need?

It was midnight. Anna was naked and dead in their bed, just as she had been every night for nine years, more than 3200 nights in total. Her chest did not rise nor fall with breath. Her lips and her nails would be a pale and ghostly blue. Elsa had arrayed her hair on her pillow like a crimson flood, had tucked her so carefully into sheets she couldn't feel. Cold, but not stiff.

Dead to this world, but not to the other one.

"She took my hand, and she said, 'Had you ever considered that your Anna is a mount for God?' Then she closed the door and locked it."

Elsa had her eyes open, yet she could practically see the curtains of the door billowing in the motion of the door closing, could practically hear the oiled snick of the deadbolt as it would slide home. The dandelion puffs would disintegrate as Haley crunched over the lawn in her laced-up combat boots.

Mount for God.

A dark horse.

"That's a rather strange thing to say, isn't it?" Elsa said, feeling a little light-headed, disconnected. She could see her good fingers clasping the water glass, trembling slightly. Haley had since taken her other hand away to clutch her pillow, so Elsa folded her mangled left hand over her waist, tucking it under her right arm, as she often did.

"Yes, it was. I decided not to pound on her door; I didn't think it would do any good." There was a tight grimace on Haley's face; they both remembered what had happened nine years ago at Katja's house, the house of their fortune teller. Their enemy. "It sounds vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite get a handle on it, and then the last week of my visit was too busy for much else."

"Anna wouldn't like to be called something like that," Elsa mused.

Haley smiled, a raw and bitter smile, and said, "God died to her a long time ago, just like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy."

In the dim lamplight, for there was no other light now erupting from the fireplace, no other light to glisten on the glass of water or to cast reflections on the windows, Elsa saw the chain around Haley's neck that was always there, a fine silver chain upon which hung a tiny silver cross. "After all that you have seen, how do you still believe?" Elsa asked, wishing she could just sleep, for she was so very tired.

"After all I've seen, I find it impossible not to," Haley replied.

**Then**

Anna's first pay check was not significantly more substantial than the ones she had earned at the garage; especially the last part of the year as she spent more and more time as a mechanic than a clerk. Still, Anna celebrated the pay check with some well-deserved indulgences: premium ice cream (not the generic stuff half wax and half caragheenan), and her own copy of the A.E. Cannon book. It intrigued her, for it didn't have a happy ending.

That weekend, eating the ice cream so very slowly, letting the exquisite coolness of it invade her tongue and senses, she devoured the book again, lingering over passages that were unexpectedly poignant and moving. It was titled The Ledger, and delicately revealed throughout the book were nuggets of pure expression. At one point she sat back in her donated chair, closing her eyes and letting her imagination unfold the scene.

Warm and secure, ignoring the noise from the apartment upstairs, ignoring the whispered slur of the heating register, Anna began to drift into a state of half sleep and half wakefulness, where the characters of the book took on new identities, finally morphing into a dreamed version of herself and another.

White-gold hair like a shower of sunshine and snow, skin the creamy shade of vanilla ice cream and just as sweet, a pencil tucked behind the ear and the most hesitant smile that hinted of grand mystery and adventure.

Her eyes were the blue of seawater.

When she realized what she was thinking, Anna abruptly yanked herself from her daydream, her heart pounding and she felt that strange and near painful ache in her gut. She had almost forgotten how heady and stormy desire was. Had she ever really felt like this for Hans?

At odd quiet times throughout the entire weekend, Anna found herself thinking of Elsa. Those thoughts were always accompanied by an increase in the tempo of her heart, flushed cheeks and a slowly growing realization: she was attracted to her.

The thought was terrifying.

Resurrected in full force were the teachings of her childhood, of pulpit denunciations of sin and the dangers of passion and lust. She recalled in minute detail the lecture given in the kitchen before she left on her first date as a shy and excited sixteen year old girl. The boy's name had been Mark, and when he held her hand in the movie theatre she felt as light and bubbly as marshmallow fluff, that strange and terrifying ache in her chest.

Their first kiss had been a disaster. Anna broke up with him the next day, to the silent gratitude of her parents.

When nearly every kiss with nearly every boy ended up the same way, Anna had begun to think of herself as broken, damaged goods, wrecked forever by the horrifying experience she had had as a child, the experience she had never related to anyone, even Hans.

Yet she also thought of Sergeant Carter, her hair down from her ponytail, the adoration of the universe in her eyes, felicity in her smile.

Then erupted her father's sermons on homosexuality, a consequence of fire and brimstone for the unrepentant sinner. Supposedly there was only lofty and charitable love in the eyes of a God who looked upon the sinner as His child, yet that same God delighted in the judgment that would follow, the exodus of the soul from heaven into hell for daring to love that which should not be loved.

The bible said that God remarks the fall of every sparrow.

But the sparrow still falls.

Anna was glad she had found that God was dead, and heaven a sham. That was the day of the gunman, the cranberry drops, and the dead dog. If God was anything at all He was only a prankster, playing Russian roulette with souls.

She was terrified of the idea blossoming within her, yet she began to allow those thoughts, and started to cultivate those daydreams, until she and this dream-Elsa held conversations; they shared light touches and friendly banter. She could not dream of more than this. Not yet.

The tide of her heart was slowly shifting. She read the opening line of the beloved book again and again, repeating it to herself in the thin tides of night, already astounded at the miraculous beauty of her transformed life.

The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all.

She ached for a kiss.

Several days passed in this quiet revolution. When Tuesday came, Anna found she couldn't lift her head when Elsa entered through the library doors. It was a studied and careful ignorance on both parts as Elsa retreated to her habitual carrel and Anna hovered with the returned books. Haley, laconic and far too observant, sporting an electric blue streak in her hair now instead of a purple one, said, "Geez, you guys have a fight or something?"

There was instant mortification shown on Anna's flushed cheeks, and she wished she could just control herself like a normal twenty eight year old girl, and not blush every single time someone said something suggestive.

She always read those sexy portions of A.E. Cannon's book furtively, as if she would be judged by her greasy walls for reading about intimate encounters. As if her father would somehow know what she was reading, romantic trash more suited for library auction bins and displays in gas stations than shelved in pride on her bookshelf.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Anna replied, just loftily enough for Haley to roll her eyes.

Anna found reasons to look in Elsa's direction many times throughout that day. When the end of the day rolled around and the girl was packing up her notebook and pencil, Anna was half hopeful and half terrified for a conversation before Elsa left.

Courage eluded her. She looked down at the counter when Elsa looked at her, missing the answering flush and confusion in Elsa's cheeks.

Haley saw everything and said nothing.

On her solitary walk home after work that day, Anna paused to look at her reflection in the mirrored glass of a storefront window. She tucked her hair behind her ears and tilted her head, her light scarf soft against her throat. Her makeup had survived the ravages of the working day; looking at her reflection in the mirror, delighted and surprised, Anna discovered something rather astonishing: she was actually pretty.

That night as she cooked up a Hungarian goulash with noodle kuchen, the cheese between the eggy noodles all soft and foreign and bewitching, Anna discovered something else: she was actually interesting. How many librarian car mechanic chefs were there?

Reading the book by lamplight, entranced by the love between the characters, their sacrifices and hopes, the great ledger of joys and pains, Anna paused to look at her hands, not so oil-spotted now nor grubby, and discovered the last great truth: she was as deserving of love and happiness as anyone else. It seemed that she had taken the first steps to regaining her happiness, which left just one more question.

Just what would that love look like?

Anna carried home three bags of groceries the following day after work, cooking in the evening with her heart in her throat, always doubting, never stopping. As she prepared her evening repast, she forced herself to recall Elsa's peanut butter sandwiches, battered bananas, and bottles of water. Boring. Empty. Meaningless.

Wanting.

Elsa's food looked exactly like Anna's former life.

Anna would show her something different by preparing a lunch for her. That this life, like food, was irresistibly delicious, sometimes comforting, sometimes exotic, sometimes a surprise, and every moment, just like every mouthful, was a celebration.

What was the worst that could happen, should she go through with her plan?

Elsa could take Anna's offering of lunch and throw it on the floor, grinding it into the carpet and stalking away in a huff. Which was unlikely, given the girl's lack of histrionics and general love of peace and quiet.

She could take it politely, taste it and frown, and when Anna wasn't looking she could wrap the food in a plastic bag to store in her backpack and throw away without Anna noticing. She could then avoid Anna at every opportunity and stop coming to the library.

Or she could taste it, and like it, and thank Anna for thinking of her.

And then, Anna, and then?

What was the worst that could happen?

Elsa could enjoy the meal, and praise Anna's cooking, and then reveal that she had a huge and knuckle-cracking boyfriend. She could invite Anna to join them on a double date, which Anna would politely decline, and then neither of them would expect Anna to cook for her again.

She could speak of Anna to this muscle-bound boyfriend in the sticky heat of night, and chuckle over how mousy and misguided Anna was, how deserving of pity, the poor divorced dear, so desperate for a friend. He would chuckle in return, and crush her as he moved inside her, sating her hunger in a way that Anna never could.

But then, as she pulled sizzling hot lamb skewers from under the broiler, squeezing fresh lemon that danced and jumped on the metal, Anna allowed herself to think just a little further.

Think it, Anna. What was the best that could happen?

Elsa could enjoy the meal, smile that shy smile as she asked how Anna learned how to cook. As each week passed, Tuesdays and Thursdays would become sacred, blessed with light conversation, friendly banter, sidelong glances.

Then devastating touches, on the hand or wrist, skin soft as clouds.

Hands that could would clasp so hesitantly at first, the sensation of long, womanly fingers so foreign, so addictive. Walking hand in hand near the Kennebec River, knowing but not caring about the people staring at them, aware of the rush of blood, the great and all consuming ache growing, widening the midsection, delirious in its painful joy.

And then? What then, Anna?

Her first kiss. Warm lips, so soft, so full, so knowing. Always giving, always taking, always wanting more. The great chasm filled, the great hunger appeased, the great and all encompassing need of her entire life consumed in this one single moment.

The kiss she left Hans for.

The kiss that would save her.

Anna ate her dinner slowly at her tiny table that night, a void of sound in her apartment. She did not eat to the television screen, nor to music, nor to any book. She ate to the whirling maelstrom of her thoughts, daydreams flickering, calling to her like mythological Sirens. She imagined Elsa sitting at the table with her, Elsa understanding that food wasn't simply carbs or calories or fuel. Food, good food, just like music or books, was just another vehicle of pure expression.

She finished her meal and looked at the large amount of food leftover, hesitating. The resulting decision was such a soft one, so meaningless in the current shadow of time, but it would end up being another two percent shift, diverting not only her own future, but Elsa's as well, to the taste of seawater, the hatred of calliopes, the debt that could never be repaid.

Anna evaluated those worst case scenarios in her head, the frightening idea of taking lunch to Elsa, and then made that soft decision.

Whatever the consequence would be, it would still be worth the attempt.

The brave may not live forever, but the timid do not live at all.

There, in her kitchen, to the smell of lamb and the creamy taste of labneh, Anna found her courage.

And later, when the curtain of night had fallen, ushering out the cares of the day, Anna lay in her narrow bed, her eyes screwed shut, her skin throbbing. Slow, luscious breaths as she concocted a fantasy more astounding than any of the others, for she was no blushing primitive stalker now. No, Anna was pretty, and interesting, and soft, her laughter as sultry and rich as marzipan, and there was an endless bonfire of desire in her eyes.

She imagined Elsa in her arms, and the embrace was no mere meaningless contact; it was a torment that increased with every passing moment. The imagined sensation of Elsa's breasts against hers, the exquisite softness of Elsa's skin. That slight gasping inhale of breath as Anna drew her fingers over her lips, down her chin, tracing the smooth line of neck, following the trek of those fingers with her lips.

Skin like ice cream, just so sweet.

Elsa would crane her head back then, and arch upwards in Anna's arms. Her skin would glow in the moonlight, as if kissed by a million motes of stardust. In Anna's kiss, Elsa would discover the secrets of the moon and stars, their eruption into being after Apollo pulled the chariot of the sun to the other side of the world, where there would be spice, and there would be ivory, and there would be the sensuous scent of night-flowering orchids in the sticky heat of the tropics, where it wasn't only wet, it was slick, it was hot, it was a hard nub of pleasure above silken folds, and when her mouth would encircle Elsa's breast, and when her tongue would journey down along the sweet path that led deeper, hotter, wetter, her fingers seeking and then finding that slick hot silken fold, thrusting inside to the maddened syncopation of heartbeats, every moment lifting higher, thrusting deeper, whispering and then screaming of the promises to come.

And come.

Anna only realized what she had done when she shuddered into the throes of a long-needed release, the imagined imprint of Elsa on her skin, her own fingers slick and warm.

Only one thought cascaded before sleep overwhelmed her.

She never knew it could feel so good.


	8. Chapter 8

**~8~**

**Now**

Elsa rose well before her alarm would sound, near restless for 6 am. In those last dark corners of night, Elsa replayed her conversation with Haley over and over again in mounting frustration. She paced their room the last half hour before preparing the shower, and prayed that Anna was returning from a blue night.

She and Haley had decided not to speak of what she learned in Malone. Not yet.

6:04 am arrived and she was in the hot shower with Anna, who returned to her with a sigh, not a scream, kissing her on her scarred throat and trembling with exhaustion. When Anna asked if they were alive, Elsa could barely answer her. They were alive, after a fashion.

They were both kind of dead, too.

Later as they dressed in their bedroom, Anna used the blue marker to transcribe her nightly event in the unseen world; an encounter with a wispy and frail yogi from India, who had died as he had lived, in peace and serenity.

He had tried to kiss her on the forehead. She, being revenant, could not feel his touch. He passed through her like smoke. He still blessed her before he went on his way, off to whatever afterlife he believed in.

At breakfast their guests, the Chathams, spoke of being somewhat loathe to return to their hometown; the weather report from home was not promising. Elsa helped check them out an hour later. "I hope to see you again soon," Elsa told them as they signed the guest register, smiling to think of them dancing to the tempo of the firelight and the enchanting music of luscious and chocolaty voices.

"We'll send you a postcard," they promised before they left. Elsa waved as they drove away, their rental car stirring up a tornado of fallen autumn leaves.

It was not hard to understand their reticence; the October day was stunning. Cirrus clouds were painted thinly across the washed blue sky and the sun was a pale disc of gold. The air was heavily laden with a million autumn-time fragrances, of pine needles and leaf mould and dust and flowers. Following their guests departure, Kristoff and Renee retreated deep into the groves, leaving Elsa, Anna, and Haley to the gardens. Anna was tired, foregoing a nap after her blue night in order to catch up with Haley.

Even though they were close to the house, they all wore orange vests; Elsa learned that from her father. Three of the Kelly clan were already dead and enjoying their residence in a cemetery outside of West Dresden, Maine.

"Let's see if I've got this straight," Haley was saying, turning over earth vigorously. She looked normal again this morning, with her black lipstick back on and her eyes all made up. Chains dangling from her jeans made a pleasant sound, and her black combat boots were victorious over the muck. "Mrs. Baxter is blaming me for Sherri getting a nose ring? The girl is sixteen! If that is the most rebellious thing she ever does, Mrs. Baxter should be grateful!"

"She just thinks it's part of a logical progression," Anna replied, loading a wheelbarrow full of compost. "First, a nose ring. Then a tattoo."

"Yeah, and then sacrificing babies while listening to death metal," Haley laughed. "On second thought, she's right. I'm initiating Sherri into the ranks of the undead."

"Are you a vampire now?" Elsa asked, sitting on a crate to clean and prepare spring bulbs. Tulips, daffodils, jonquils, narcissus; the fireworks of colour in the spring would come only by careful fall planting. Farmer's habits died hard.

"Zombie, actually," Haley replied, pointing at herself.

"Ghost," said Anna, pointing at herself.

Elsa sighed. There was too much truth. A mean silence ensued, finally broken by Haley. "Okay, so that's everything? Sherri got a nose ring, the Parsons dog had puppies, and there was a grass fire outside town? Nothing else happened while I was away?"

"Charlie Neesom knocked over a tombstone with his car," Elsa added helpfully.

"Stop the presses!" Haley grinned. "Not fifty year old Charlie Neesom! Not a tombstone!"

Elsa flicked dirt at her and was surprised to find she didn't have to force a smile on her lips.

Anna set down the wheelbarrow and stretched her back. "Actually, we heard from Gerda a week ago," she said.

Elsa grimaced, which Haley caught. "What's wrong? Is it Casey?"

"She's back in the hospital," Anna continued. "Renal failure this time."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" Haley asked, indignant, pausing over her shovel. Elsa was really rather amazed that Haley could act so normal in front of Anna, as if their conversation the night before had no drastic implications.

The Oscar for Best Actress goes to...

"There's not much any of us can do about it," Elsa said. "It's rather amazing that they can make batteries out of bacterial cells but there is still no cure for cancer. Just like we discussed, it's not like Santa can bring her a new kidney for Christmas, even if she could last that long."

Both Anna and Haley looked at her, trying to mask the shock of Elsa's cold words.

"Is she back in Bangor, then?" Haley asked, trying to jump start another conversation.

"Yes," Anna replied, finally looking back at Haley.

"Can we go see her? Just in case?" Those last words Haley spoke were deflated, and Elsa knew why.

Just in case this was really the end. The girl had spent her entire life in and out of hospitals for her leukemia. It was no way for a child to grow up, but this was better than the alternative: a tiny corpse in a shallow grave. Somehow the girl always pulled through. It made Elsa mad that God would toy with her so. Sometimes God was no more than a cruel joke.

Anna didn't believe in God at all. It was fate she despised, nearly as much as the fortune teller.

Elsa glanced over at Anna, whose face was hopeful. They had no guests arriving for two days. They could take the risk of the two-hour drive to Bangor tomorrow to visit her. "I think we'll go tomorrow," Elsa said. Anna clapped her hands and grinned.

Later in the afternoon, after eating heftily of the leftover biryani, all three women hooked up their laptops on the kitchen table, Haley to update the inn's website and to blog about her latest paranormal experience on the Prestwood Bridge, Anna to start planning the menu for the following week, and Elsa to the shy unfolding of her latest novel. It was a quiet time, made sacred by love.

Her characters were on strike. They stayed away, and Elsa could not force them back.

Anna thumbed the narrow gold ring on the ring finger of her left hand as she looked up at Elsa, a mischievous impish gnome of an idea inside her eyes.

"What?" Elsa asked warily.

"I think it's time to celebrate being Irish. I just found a recipe for a beer-battered cod made with Guinness."

"You know I can never say no to fish and chips, especially if there is Guinness involved," Elsa replied. "But will you also include Shepherd's Pie and Irish Stew?"

"Can't be Irish without meat and potatoes, can it?"

"Perhaps we should celebrate both sides of my heritage," Elsa said. "It's been ages since you made me krumkake."

"Your wish is my command," Anna proclaimed, bowing to Elsa from her chair. Elsa flicked a potato chip at her and smiled.

That evening, after they had eaten far too much spaghetti and meatballs, Kristoff rubbing his expanding paunch and Anna groaning in contentment, Haley piped up, "Okay, guys, it's game time. I vote for Trivial Pursuit, the Lord of the Rings Edition."

"I'd stand a better chance of winning if it were the Star Wars Edition," Renee said.

"Star Trek for me, unfortunately," Anna said, making a moue.

"Is there an edition for Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" Kristoff asked. "I'd totally win."

"That's because you taped every episode and watched every scene that had Buffy in it," Elsa remarked to her brother. "You were obsessed with her."

"I've got a new obsession now," he laughed, giving his wife a kiss on the cheek. Renee turned her head and returned the kiss, this time on his mouth. Elsa made an exaggerated moan of disgust.

Everyone laughed. "How about just the Movie Edition?"Elsa asked. "It would give us a more even playing field."

"Bring it," growled Haley.

An anthropologist would have been amazed at how quickly they went from civilized humans to degenerates, howling like monkeys while they laughed and laughed. "These mashed potatoes are so creamy!" Haley giggled as she read the clue, staring at Renee, who was twirling a plastic pie piece in her hand.

"They talk about leaning!" Anna mock-whispered.

"And Cesar Romero," Elsa whispered as well.

"Was he tall?" Anna asked Elsa innocently, quoting from the movie.

"No, he was Spanish."

Haley glared at all of them. "You're cheating! Stop it!"

Renee clapped her hands. "While You Were Sleeping!"

"Bingo," Haley said.

"Actually, this is Trivial Pursuit," Kristoff dead-panned. He got lightly punched in the shoulder by his wife.

The next hint revolved around 18 decapitations and Christopher Walken. "Sleepy Hollow!" Anna said, crowing with delight as she took the dice for another turn. "You know, he plays such a creepy bad guy. I almost can't watch him when he plays a good guy. You know the movie Hairspray? I kept waiting for the minute he would start eating his wife."

"You mean John Travolta," Kristoff said.

"See? John Travola in drag? Secret horror movie."

"It's Jack Nicholson for me," Elsa said. "Once he played the Joker in the older Batman movies, I could never take him seriously ever again."

"Ooh, and the whole, 'Here's Johnny!' moment from The Shining, when he's chopping down the door with the big axe?" Haley replied.

"Did you ever see the Simpsons remake?" Kristoff piped in. "For their Treehouse of Horror spoof?"

"No pizza and no beer make Homer something something," Renee said, smiling at him.

"Oh, yes, this is the woman of my dreams," Kristoff said.

"Are you trying to get lucky tonight?" she asked.

"I'm lucky every night I spend in your company," he said, bowing to her, taking her hand and kissing her fingertips.

"Good answer, brother," Elsa said. "That's one way of keeping out of the doghouse. Not that Cub would want to share it with you anyway."

The dog, who had been sitting on Renee's feet, thumped her tail at the mention of her name. "We are so getting another dog," Kristoff said. "A boy dog, and a real manly one, like a Great Dane or a Greyhound."

"No poodles?" Haley asked sweetly.

"As long as I could name him Butch or Killer, I'd consider it," he replied loftily.

Elsa laughed until her sides ached, and they were all so caught up in the game that Anna's watch alarm that signalled four minutes to 9 o'clock went off while they were all still at the table.

There was an immediate shock of silence; they could barely hear the music in the background.

Anna's face fell. "I don't want to go," she said softly, looking down at the pieces strewn over the table, the bits of popcorn and glasses of beer. "I just want to stay up with you guys, and laugh and cheat and get silly as it gets late. I don't want to go." Elsa, her heart tearing, slid her hand over to touch Anna, but Anna recoiled, abruptly got up from the table and turned away to scream, "DAMMIT!"

Robbie Williams sang in the background, a jazzy tune that grated on their nerves. What right had he to be happy?

"Dammit, dammit, DAMMIT!" Anna screamed.

Elsa got up without a noise and went to the cupboard. They had a huge stack of plates, as their inn was a common destination for weddings in the summer. They had good china, the not so good china, and the ten cent china for children and in-laws. Elsa pulled out a small stack of the ten cent china plates, placed them on the counter, and then took one to Anna, who was standing with her arms folded, her lips thin and tight, high spots of anger on her cheeks.

"Smash it," she said, handing Anna the plate.

Looking at Elsa, Anna's eyes slowly went from venomous to weary. "I'm sorry, Elsa." She rubbed her eyes with her balled up hand.

"Smash the damn plate," Elsa repeated, smiling a grim little smile to show that she, too, hated this, just as much as Anna did.

Anna took the plate and threw it on the ground. It sparked into pieces like a mini-bomb among the freakish silence. Without a word, Elsa handed her another plate, which Anna promptly threw on the ground. Two more plates met their untimely death, shivered apart and broken.

"Twenty seconds," said Haley.

Anna faced Elsa, tears in her eyes. "How do you always know how to make me feel better?" Anna asked, grasping Elsa's good hand.

Knowledge was a weapon of the unseen world.

"Ten seconds."

But Elsa didn't answer, for she was out of time. Kristoff got up to assist, but Elsa shook her head, wrapping her arms around her partner and holding her tight. "I'll see you in the morning," Elsa whispered into Anna's nicked ear.

Then the brilliant flash of light, the slumping of Anna's limbs. Her heart ceased its ticking, her chest immobile. A strand of hair fell over her face. Elsa held the ragdoll body for a few minutes, remembering.

Though nine years had passed, Elsa could recall nearly everything about the day that changed her destiny forever. Just a two percent shift, so seemingly small; a pebble, really, to divert the course of her future. She hadn't recognized it, back then.

It was the day of the lamb and the labneh.

**Then**

The last Thursday of October, and the air was so fresh it must have been picked out that very morning by Mother Nature. Anna managed to get herself to the library that morning with the extra lunch that she had packed, overriding all her trembling, right brain concerns. The decision had been made, and she would stick to it.

She also managed to smile at Elsa when the blonde woman came through the doors not long after the library opened. She looked especially appealing this morning, her hair caught up in a loose bun with tendrils that floated near her ears, the lightest kiss of makeup on her eyes and cheeks. There was a silky scarf around her neck, more for decoration than any hint of a battle with winter malice. She even wore fashionable suede boots.

In short, she was devastatingly alluring, and Anna could have slunk into any corner of the library, or begged for the earth to swallow her up for daring to think of her the way she did. There was no chance that Elsa was single. There would be an even lesser chance that she would welcome the love-sodden crush of another girl.

Just who did Elsa dress up for today?

"Good morning," Elsa said as she passed her by, flashing a small and perfect smile as she walked.

"Ga-huh," was Anna's brilliant response.

Based on the failure of that conversation, Anna didn't try a second attempt; her cheeks flushed as Elsa lifted an eyebrow, but the blonde kept walking on, leaving Anna to her pile of books and dire mortification.

Once Elsa was out of earshot, Anna looked in the direction of her carrel, hidden though it was by numerous walls and stacks, and mumbled, "Good morning to you, too. You're looking great this morning. What is your boyfriend's name?"

"They say talking to yourself is a sign of insanity," Haley said from behind her.

Anna jumped slightly, her ears now flaming as much as her cheeks. "How long have you been there?" she demanded.

"Just long enough to question your sanity."

"You're only insane if you answer yourself," Anna replied, regaining her wits. "Or if you start eating people."

"If you were the one cooking, I would probably eat anything," Haley said. "I do draw the line at human tartare. It might be good enough for Hannibal the Cannibal, but Haley Grant has higher standards."

"How about flame broiled with a honey garlic glaze, served with shallots and Chianti?"

"See? Sold already. Can we stop talking about food and start talking about Elsa?"

Anna looked down at her books, suddenly industrious once more. "What is there to talk about?" she mumbled.

Haley sighed. "Have it your way, Anna. Look, I just got a call from Gerda. They had to run Casey to emergency last night, some complication or another with the chemo, so she won't be in for the rest of the week."

"I wish there were something we could do," Anna said softly. "I feel so... useless at a time like this."

"You could see about smuggling your squares into the hospital," Haley responded. "The hospital food has a bad reputation for some reason."

"I could bake a cake with a file in it that would help her get out of prison, but the prison she's in isn't one she can bust out of, is it?"

Haley shook her head, pensive. The rest of the morning passed in a busy yet quiet haze, measured only by the increased gallop of Anna's heart. She nearly felt guilty for worrying about such tiny things as lunch when little Casey was in the hospital. Every moment drew her closer to lunchtime. At least her apartment and clothing now smelled of cloves and cumin, garlic and spice, instead of second hand smoke and grease.

At noon she felt almost nebulous as she walked upstairs to the staff room, to the tiny kitchenette reserved for staff use. Her hands near trembling, she pulled out the various containers that held the leftovers of her dinner last night, the leftovers made specifically for Elsa.

First she drizzled the side of the plate with light lines of balsamic vinaigrette and olive oil, then laid three round slices of fresh tomato on top, followed by bocconcini mozarella cheese. A finely chopped basil pesto was sprinkled on top. She arrayed pita triangles next to the tomato caprese and then plated two reheated skewers of lamb, sizzling and sprinkled with fresh lemon and feta cheese. Lastly the small bowl of labneh, a thick Mediterranean yogurt, adorned with a single kalamata olive.

Anna stood back to look at her masterpiece, and when she heard Haley's low, appreciative whistle, she suddenly took the plate and tried to give it to her co-worker.

"Nothin' doin'," Haley said, grinning, pushing it carefully back into Anna's hands. "You made it for her, you give it to her." A finger pointed down the stairs in the general direction of the main library, a quick slap on her butt, and Anna found herself propelled out the door.

And down the stairs, her heart clanging against the chassis of her chest.

And through the stacks, wooden sentinels with whispering books.

Where she cowered, staring at Elsa's back. The princess in her book tower with her platinum hair and eyes as enchanting as the mists of Avalon was reaching into her bag for the dreaded peanut butter sandwich. The banana would follow, and Anna would never find this courage again.

She had to move. The smell of the food would give her away soon enough.

The dog was dead, and there was a nick in her ear.

The timid never live at all, except in fantasy worlds of their own devising. They would never swap the fake for the reality in front of them. Would Anna return upstairs with the food undelivered, and in the night-time would she dream of a Elsa that could never be? At least that Elsa, the fantasy Elsa, loved her, breathed on her skin, kissed her so fiercely.

Time lengthened.

Be brave.

Anna mustered her army of courage and walked up to the side of the carrel, hovering in the corner of Elsa's vision until the woman lifted her head to look at her. At first the eyes were surprised, then they crinkled in amusement. "I brought you lunch," Anna said unnecessarily, seeing as she was thrusting the plate of food into Elsa's hands.

Elsa had no choice but to take it. When she looked down at the plate of food, delightfully arrayed and deliciously plated with a confluence of colours and textures, Anna whipped out a knife and fork wrapped in a cloth napkin and set it on the precarious stack of books. Then she took a step back, ready to run away.

"But I - "Elsa started to say.

"I hope you enjoy it," Anna blurted, and then she fled. Speedwalking along the stacks, she could feel Elsa's eyes on her, scorching her back, so she welcomed the wall that soon came between them, and rushed up the stairs with her cheeks flushed and her eyes burning. She burst into the staff room, huffing and breathless, trying to ignore Haley's amusement.

"Well?" Haley asked.

"I gave it to her."

"And?" Haley asked. Anna just flushed deeper, so Haley deadpanned, "You ran away, didn't you?"

"It wasn't exactly running away. It was an orderly retreat, not a rout."

"So you retreated from a woman armed with a peanut butter sandwich and a banana. Remind me not to join the army with you."

"She has a pencil, too, you know," Anna huffed, sticking her tongue out at her. "Go be useful and scout for me."

Haley flicked her heels to attention and saluted her before grinning and dashing down the stairs. Anna really wanted to know what Elsa's response would be, but new bravery only went so far. Would Elsa like it? Would she hate it? Would she eat it at all, seeing as it came from someone who was nearly a stranger?

True to her resolve, Anna did not regret her decision to share the lunch. She really wanted to know what was going on down there, but her feet were clay.

Displaying feats of innocence and calm reporting skills that nearly took Anna aback, Haley popped upstairs once in a while to report. "She's eating it," was her first response.

"She really likes it," was her second.

"Anna, get your butt down here," was the third.

Wishing she could be as trusting and calm as Haley, Anna crept down the stairs to return to her station at the front desk. She stared at the stack of books to be processed and wondered if Elsa had ever touched any of them. She forced herself not to look in the direction of Elsa's carrel.

Haley cleared her throat, and Anna turned her head.

Elsa was coming to her.

It was a moment Anna would never forget.

Ignoring Haley with the softest of intents, Elsa descended on Anna with nearly frightening conviction, her pale face also flushed somewhat with some untold emotion. Anna, for all the quaking in her shoes, stood her ground and allowed the woman to approach her with that quiet and fierce attention.

It was the first moment that Elsa looked at her, and only her. There was no meandering of her gaze to Haley or the stack of books; she did not deny the impact of her approach with averting her gaze at all. Every ounce of food on the plate had been devoured; Elsa held the plate and used cutlery in her hands. That cleared plate, the soft and thin sweater she wore with the silky scarf, the suede boots that lightly clopped over the carpeted floor, her hair with those soft tendrils framing her face, her blue eyes gleaming.

A real moment, not fantasy. Anna could replay it a million times in her mind and know of its truth. She could not have dreamed of a moment this sublime, not in all her nightly imaginings.

And she felt herself slide even deeper down a grassy slope of crushing love and infatuation, simultaneously excited and terrified. She still wasn't single. How long would it take to get her divorce?

Her kiss?

"Anna?" Elsa asked, the slim counter separating them. Anna nodded, not trusting words to come out of her mouth with any sort of coherence. "I don't know why you did this, but it was delicious," Elsa continued. "Now I know why you asked if I was allergic to anything." She chuckled then, a low and endearing sound, made even more alluring by the dimples that peeked from her cheeks.

Anna still couldn't say anything. There seemed to be some sort of blockade in her throat.

"Where did you learn to cook like that?" Elsa asked, after that small and challenging pause.

Answer the question!

"Ga, I-uh," she started, before halting and swallowing down some of the thickness. "I've always liked to cook," she gamely went on, slower, more in control. "I've never taken lessons, if that's what you mean."

"Kristoff is the cook in our household," Elsa said.

Kristoff? Who the heck is Kristoff?

The muscle-bound boyfriend, no doubt, to crush Elsa's butterfly wings and soft soul. Had Elsa ever known the touch of a woman, any touch, like a Sergeant Carter touch, so simple on the hand, rearranging everything?

Anna couldn't help herself; her eyes immediately flicked to Elsa's left hand, where custom placed rings to tell stories of love and devotion, symbols of marital commitment known throughout the world. The ring finger on her fair and pale hand was empty.

Anna lifted her glance as fast as she could, but she knew by the twinkle in Elsa's eyes that Elsa had seen and understood every nuance.

"Kristoff is my brother," Elsa said, rather quickly, near defensively, as if to erase any wrong assumptions.

"You don't cook?" Anna asked, trying to stay on safe subjects that would not lead her tongue to embarrassment, elated and terrified that she was actually having a conversation with the castle book girl.

"Let's just say I can mess up even the simplest recipes," Elsa said, a wry and self-deprecating grin on her face. Those dimples shone even brighter. "When I made Kool-Aid with salt and managed to burn water, I was pretty much banned from the kitchen for life."

"So what do you like to do?" Anna asked.

"I write," Elsa said slowly, looking at Anna with a strange expression on her face. Did she want Anna to challenge her on it, or not?

Anna saw the look but couldn't quite interpret it, so she manufactured what she hoped was a safe response. "That's really neat. I can't write."

"Yes, you can," Elsa immediately countered.

Taken slightly aback by Elsa's tone, Anna said, "Um, I can?"

"Everyone can write," Elsa said, "Just like everyone can sing. You just may not be able to do it very well."

"I'll leave the writing and singing to someone like you," Anna replied, smiling, trying not to fidget with nervousness. "I'll stay in the kitchen where I belong."

"Kitchen and library," Elsa replied. She had set the plate down; at her last comment she touched Anna lightly on her hand.

A devastating touch. Was it to be interpreted as innocuous, or a hint of something more?

Elsa left, returning to her carrel, leaving Anna to stare at her hand, the cleared plate, and the stack of books.

"Score one for blondie," Haley said.

Anna just kept looking at her hand and the plate, the sun rising in her heart. "Are we keeping score?" she asked softly, not really expecting or needing an answer.

"Darned if I know," Haley replied. "That's just what they say in romantic comedies."

Anna knew what she would do next. She would recall this moment a million times over, plan a million more lunches, knowing she would swim whole oceans of bitter seawater just to see Elsa smile at her again.


End file.
